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AUG 20 1900 

Copyright entry 

SECOND COPY. 

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COI'VKIOHT, 1900, BY W. B. CONKEY COMPANY, 



74385 



CONTENTS. 



IiECTUBE. PAGE. 

I. The Valley of Diamonds 7 

II. The Pyramid Builders 25 

III. The Crystal Life 43 

IV. The Crystal Orders 63 

V. Crystal Virtues 83 

VI. Crystal Quarrels ,. 107 

VII. Home Virtues 127 

VIII. Crystal Caprice 153 

IX. Crystal Sorrows. 173 

X. The Crystal Rest 195 



PERSONS. 



Old Lecturer (of incalculable age). 
Florrie, 

on astronomical evidence presumed to be aged 9 

Isabel ■• 

May -i 

Lily " 

Kathleen " 

Lucilla..., M 

Violet •■ 

Dora (who has the keys and is housekeeper). ... M 

Egypt (so called from her dark eyes) M 

Jessie (who somehow always makes the room 

look brighter when she is in it) " 18 

Mary (of whom everybody, including the Old 

Lecturer, is in great awe) " 20 



LECTURE I. 
THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 



LECTURE I. 

THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS. 

A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after 
raisin-and-almond time. 

Old Lecturer; Florrie, Isabel, May, Lily, and 
Sibyl. 

Old Lecturer (L.). Come here, Isabel, and 
tell me what the make-believe was, this after- 
noon. 

Isabel (arranging herself very primly on the 
foot-stool). Such a dreadful one ! Florrie and 
I were lost in the Valley of Diamonds. 

L. What! Sindbad's, which nobody could 
get out of? 

Isabel. Yes; but Florrie and I got out of it. 

L. So I see. At least, I see you did ; but 
are you sure Florrie did? 

Isabel. Quite sure. 

Florrie (putting her head round from behind 
L. 's sofa-cushion). Quite sure. (Disappears 
again.) 

L. I think I could be made to feel surer 
about it. 



8 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

(Florrie reappears, gives L. a kiss, and again 
exit.) 

L. I suppose it's all right; but how did you 
manage it? 

Isabel. Well, you know, the eagle that took 
up Sindbad was very large — very, very large 
— the largest of all the eagles. 

L. How large were the others? 

Isabel. I don't quite know — they were so 
far off. But this one was, oh, so big ! and it 
had great wings, as wide as — twice over the 
ceiling. So, when it was picking up Sindbad, 
Florrie and I thought it wouldn't know if we 
got on its back, too; so I got up first, and 
then I pulled up Florrie, and we put our arms 
round its neck, and away it flew. 

L. But why did you want to get out of the 
valley? and why haven't you brought me some 
diamonds? 

Isabel. It was because of the serpents. I 
couldn't pick up even the least little bit of a 
diamond, I was so frightened. 

L. You should not have minded the ser- 
pents. 

Isabel. Oh, but suppose that they had 
minded me? 

L. We all of us mind you a little too much, 
Isabel, I'm afraid. 

Isabel. No — no — no, indeed. 

L. I tell you what, Isabel — I don't believe 
either Sindbad, or Florrie, or you, ever were 
in the Valley of Diamonds. 

Isabel. You naughty! when I tell you we 
were! 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 9 

L. Because you say you were frightened at 
the serpents. 

Isabel. And wouldn't you have been? 

L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who 
really goes into the valley is ever frightened 
at them — they are so beautiful. 

Isabel (suddenly serious). But there's no 
real Valley of Diamonds, is there? 

L. Yes, Isabel; very real, indeed. 

Florrie (reappearing). Oh, where? Tell 
me about it. 

L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it ; 
only I know it is very different from Sind- 
bad's. In his valley, there was only a diamond 
lying here and there ; but, in the real valley, 
there are diamonds covering the grass in 
showers every morning, instead of dew ; and 
there are clusters of trees, which look like 
lilac- trees; but, in spring, all their blossoms 
are of amethyst. 

Florrie. But there can't be any serpents 
there, then? 

L. Why not? 

Florrie. Because they don't come into such 
beautiful places. 

L. I never said it was a beautiful place. 

Florrie. What ! not with diamonds strewed 
about it like dew? 

L. That's according to your fancy, Florrie. 
For myself, I like dew better. 

Isabel. Oh, but the dew won't stay; it all 
dries ! 

L. Yes ; and it would be much nicer if the 
diamonds dried, too, for the people in the val- 



10 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

ley have to sweep them off the grass, in heaps, 
whenever they want to walk on it; and then 
the heaps glitter so, they hurt one's eyes. 

Florrie. Now you're just playing, you know. 

L. So are you, you know. 

Florrie. Yes, but you mustn't play. 

L. That's very hard, Florrie; why mustn't 
I, if you may? 

Florrie. Oh, I may, because I'm little, but 
you mustn't, because you're — (hesitates for 
a delicate expression of magnitude). 

L. (rudely taking the first that comes) Be- 
cause I'm big? No; that's not the way of it 
at all, Florrie. Because you.'re little, you 
should have very little play; and because I'm 
big, I should have a great deal. 

Isabel and Florrie (both). No — no — no — no. 
That isn't it at all. (Isabel sola, quoting Miss 
Ingelow.) "The lambs play always — they 
know no better." (Putting her head very 
much on one side.) Ah, now — please — please 
— tell us true ; we want to know. 

L. But why do you want me to tell you 
true, any more than the man who wrote the 
4 'Arabian Nights?" 

Isabel. Because — because we like to know 
about real things; and you can tell us, and 
we can't ask the man who wrote the stories. 

L. What do you call real things? 

Isabel. Now, you know ! Things that really 
are. 

L. Whether you can see them or not? 

Isabel. Yes, if somebody else saw them. 

L. But if nobody has ever seen them? 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. H 

Isabel (evading the point). Well, but, you 
know, if there were a real Valley of Diamonds, 
somebody must have seen it. 

L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. 
Many people go to real places, and never see 
them ; and many people pass through this val- 
ley, and never see it. 

Florrie. What stupid people they must be. 

L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than 
the people who do see it. 

May. I think I know where it is. 

Isabel. Tell us more about it, and then 
well guess. 

^ L. Well. There's a great broad road, by a 
river-side, leading up into it. 

May (gravely cunning, with emphasis on the 
last word). Does the road really go up? 

L. You think it should go down into a val- 
ley? No, it goes up; this is a valley among 
the hills, and it is as high as the clouds, and is 
often full of them; so that even the people 
who most want to see it, cannot, always. 

Isabel. And what is the river beside the 
road like? 

L. It ought to be very beautiful because it 
flows over diamond sand — only the water is 
thick and red. 

Isabel. Red water? 

L. It isn't all water. 

May. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, 
just now : I want to hear about the valley. 

L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under 
a steep rock ; only such numbers of people are 
always trying to get in, that they keep jost- 



12 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

ling each other, and manage it but slowly. 
Some weak ones are pushed back, and never 
get in at all; and make great moaning as they 
go away; but perhaps they are none the worse 
in the end. 

May. And when one gets in, what is it like? 

L. It is up and down, broken kind of 
ground; the road stops directly; and there are 
great dark rocks, covered all over with wild 
gourds and wild vines; the gourds, if you cut 
them, are red, with black seeds, like water- 
melons, and look ever so nice ; and the people 
of the place make a red pottage of them ; but 
you must take care not to eat any if you ever 
want to leave the valley (though I believe put- 
ting plenty of meal in it makes it wholesome). 
Then the wild vines have clusters of the color 
of amber ; and the people of the country say 
they are the grape of Eshcol ; and sweeter than 
honey; but, indeed, if anybody else tastes 
them, they are like gall. Then there are 
thickets of bramble, so thorny that they would 
be cut away directly, anywhere else ; but here 
they are covered with little cinquefoiled blos- 
soms of pure silver; and, for berries, they have 
clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which you 
only see are red after gathering them. But you 
may fancy what blackberry parties the children 
have ! Only they get their frocks and hands 
sadly torn. 

Lily. But rubies can't spot one's frocks, as 
blackberries do? 

L. No; but I'll tell you what spots them — 
the mulberries. There are great forests of 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 13 

them, all up the hills, covered with silkworms, 
some munching the leaves so loud that it is 
like mills at work; and some spinning. But 
the berries are the blackest you ever saw ; and, 
wherever they fall, they stain a deep red ; and 
nothing ever washes it out again. And it is 
their juice, soaking through the grass, which 
makes the river so red, because all its springs 
are in this wood. And the boughs of the trees 
are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive 
branches; and their leaves are dark. And it 
is in these forests that the serpents are ; but 
nobody is afraid of them. They have fine 
crimson crests, and they are wreathed about 
the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly ; 
and they are singing serpents, for the serpents 
are, in this forest, what birds are in ours. 

Florrie. Oh, I don't want to go there at all, 
now. 

L. You would like it very much, indeed, 
Florrie, if you were there. The serpents would 
not bite you ; the only fear would be of your 
turning into one ! 

Florrie. Oh, dear, but that's worse. 

L. You wouldn't think so, if you really 
were turned into one, Florrie; you would be 
very proud of your crest. And as long as you 
were yourself (not that you could get there if 
you remained quite the little Florrie you are 
now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. 
They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas 
in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing 
delightful melodies; and most of them have 
seven heads, with throats which each take a 



14 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

note of the octave ; so that they can sing chords 
— it is very fine indeed. And the fireflies fly 
round the edge of the forest all the night long; 
you wade in fireflies, they make the fields look 
like a lake trembling with reflection of stars ; 
but you must take care not to touch them, for 
they are not like Italian fireflies, but burn, 
like real sparks. 

Florrie. I don't like it at all; I'll never go 
there. 

L. I hope not, Florrie ; or, at least, that you 
will get out again if you do. And it is very 
difficult to get out, for beyond these serpent 
forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which 
form a labyrinth, winding always higher and 
higher, till the gold is all split asunder by 
wedges of ice ; and glaciers, welded, half of ice 
seven times frozen, and half of gold seven 
times frozen, hang down from them, and fall 
in thunder, cleaving into deadly splinters, like 
the Cretan arrowheads ; and into a mixed dust 
of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the 
mountain whirlwinds are able to lift and drive 
in wreaths and pillars, hiding the path with a 
burial cloud, fatal at once with wintry chill, 
and weight of golden ashes. So the wanderers 
in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and are buried 
there: — yet, over the drifted graves, those who 
are spared climb to the last, through coil on 
coil of the path ; — for at the end of it they see 
the king of the valley, sitting on his throne ; 
and beside him (but it is only a false vision), 
spectra of creatures like themselves, sit on 
thrones, from which they seem to look down 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 15 

on all the kingdoms of the world and the glory 
of them. And on the canopy of his throne 
there is an inscription in fiery letters, which 
they strive to read, but cannot; for it is writ- 
ten in words which are like the words of all 
languages, and yet are of none. Men say it is 
more like their own tongue to the English 
than it is to any other nation ; but the only 
record of it is by an Italian, who heard the 
king himself cry it as a war-cry, "Pape Satan, 
Pape Satan Aleppe. '"* 

Sibyl. But do they all perish there? You 
said there was a way through the valley, and 
out of it. 

L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them 
keep to the grass paths, where the diamonds 
are swept aside, and hold their hands over 
their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the grass 
paths lead forward gradually to a place where 
one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. 
You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did 
your guide chance to show you the pierced 
rock of the Aiguille du Midi? 

Sibyl. No, indeed, we only got up from 
Geneva on Monday night; and it rained all 
Tuesday; and we had to be back at Geneva 
again, early on Wednesday morning. 

L. Of course. That is the way to see a 
country in a Sibylline manner, by inner con- 
sciousness; but you might have seen the 
pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the 
clouds broke ; not that there is much to see in 



*Dante, Inf. 7, i. 



16 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the 
southern slope of it, is struck sharply through 
as by an owl, into a little eyelet hole; which 
you may see, seven thousand feet above the 
valley (as the clouds flit past behind it or 
leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue 
Well, there s just such an eyelet hole in one of 
the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and 
from a distance, you think that it is no bigger 
than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to 
it, they say you may drive a loaded camel 
through it, and that there are fine things on 
the other side, but I have never spoken with 
anybody who had been through. 

Sibyl. I think we understand it now We 
will try to write it down, and think of it 

L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I 
have been telling you is very true, yet you 
must not think the sort of diamonds that peo- 
ple wear m rings and necklaces are found lying 
about on the grass. Would you like to see 
now they really are found? 
Florrie. Oh, yes— yes. 
L. Isabel— or Lily— run up to my room 
and fetch me the little box with a glass lid out 
of the top drawer of the chest of drawers 
(Race between Lily and Isabel.) 

(Re-enter Isabel with the box, very much 
out of breath. Lily behind.) 

L Why, you never can beat Lily in a race 
on the stairs, can you, Isabel? 

Isabel (panting). Lily— beat me— ever so 
tar— but she gave me— the box— to carry in 
L. Take off the lid, then ; gently. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 



17 



Florrie (after peeping in, disappointed). 
There's only a great ugly brown stone! _ 

L Not much more than that, certainly, 
Florrie, if people were wise. But look, it is 
not a single stone; but a knot of pebbles 
.fastened together by gravel; and in the 
travel or compressed sand, if you look close 
L will see grains of gold glittering every- 
where, all through; and then, do you see these 
two white beads, which shine, as if they had 
been covered with grease? 

Florrie. May I touch them? 

L Yes- you will find they are not greasy 
only very 'smooth. Well, those are the fatal 
iewels; native here in their dust with gold, so 
that you may see, cradled here together, the 
two great enemies of mankind,— the strongest 
of all malignant physical powers that have 
tormented our race. 

Sibyl Is that really so? I know they do 
great harm; but do they not also do great 

g °L ' My dear child, what good? Was any 
woman, do you suppose, ever the better for 
possessing diamonds? but how many have been 
made base, frivolous and miserable by desiring 
them? Was ever man the better for having 
coffers full of gold, but who shall measure the 
guilt that is incurred to fill them? Look into 
the history of any civilized nations; analyze 
with reference to this one cause of crime and 
misery, the lives and thoughts of their nobles, 
priests, merchants and men of luxurious life. 
Every other temptation is at last concentrated 

2 Ethics 



18 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

into this: pride, and lust, and envy, and 
anger all give up their strength to avarice. 
The sin of the whole world is essentially the 
sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their 
Christ ; but they sell Him. 

Sibyl. But surely that is the fault of human 
nature? it is not caused by the accident, as it 
were, of there being a pretty metal, like gold, 
to be found by digging. If people could not 
find that, would they not find something else, 
and quarrel for it instead? 

L. No. Wherever legislators have suc- 
ceeded in excluding, for a time, jewels and 
precious metals from among national posses- 
sions, the national spirit has remained healthy. 
Covetousness is not natural to man — generosity 
is; but covetousness must be excited by a spe- 
cial cause, as a given disease by a given 
miasma and the essential nature of a material 
for the excitement of covetousness is, that it 
shall be a beautiful thing which can be retained 
without a use. The moment we can use our 
possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the 
instinct of communicating that use to others 
rises side by side with our power. If you can 
read a book rightly, you will want others to 
hear it; if you can enjoy a picture rightly, you 
will want others to see it: learn how to man- 
age a horse, a plough, or a ship, and you will 
desire to make your subordinates good horse- 
men, ploughmen, or sailors; you will never be 
able to see the fine instrument you are master 
of abused ; but once fix your desire on anything 
useless, and all the purest pride and folly in 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 19 

your heart will mix with the desire, and make 
you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump 
of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish. 

Sibyl. But surely, these two beautiful 
things, gold and diamonds, must have been 
appointed to some good purpose? 

L. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also 
earthquakes and pestilences; but of such 
ultimate purposes we can have no sight. The 
practical, immediate office of the earthquake 
and pestilence is to slay us, like moths; and, 
as moths, we shall be wise to live out of their 
way. So, the practical, immediate office of 
gold and diamonds is the multiplied destruc- 
tion of souls (in whatever sense you have been 
taught to understand that phrase) ; and the 
paralysis of wholesome human effort and 
thought on the face of God's earth: and a wise 
nation will live out of the way of them. The 
money which the English habitually spend in 
cutting diamonds would, in ten years, if it 
were applied to cutting rocks instead, leave no 
dangerous reef nor difficult harbor round the 
whole island coast. Great Britain would be a 
diamond worth cutting, indeed, a true piece 
of regalia. (Leaves this to their thoughts for 
a little while.) Then, also, we poor mineral- 
ogists might sometimes have the chance of 
seeing a fine crystal or diamond unhacked by 
the jeweler. 

Sibyl. Would it be more beautiful uncut? 

L. No; but of infinite interest. We might 
even come to know something about the 
making of diamonds. 



20 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Sibyl. I thought the chemists could make 
them already? 

L. In very small black crystals, yes; but 
no one knows how they are formed where 
they are found; or if indeed they are formed 
there at all. These, in my hand, look as if 
they had been swept down with the gravel and 
gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold 
to their native rocks, but not the diamonds. 
Read the account given of the diamond in any 
good work on mineralogy ; — you will find noth- 
ing but lists of localities of gravel, or con- 
glomerate rock (which is only an old indurated 
gravel). Some say it was once a vegetable 
gum ; but it may have been charred wood ; but 
what one would like to know is, mainly, why 
charcoal should make itself into diamonds in 
India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale. 

Sibyl. Are they wholly the same, then? 

L. There is a little iron mixed with our 
black lead; but nothing to hinder its crystalli- 
zation. Your pencils in fact are all pointed 
with formless diamonds, though they would 
be h h h pencils to purpose, if it crystallized. 

Sibyl. But what is crystallization? 

L. A pleasant question, when one's half 
asleep, and it has been tea-time these two 
hours. What thoughtless things girls are! 

Sibyl. Yes, we are ; but we want to know, 
for all that. 

L. My dear, it would take a week to tell 
you. 

Sibyl. Well, take it, and tell us. 

L. But nobody knows anything about it. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 21 

Sibyl. Then tell us something that nobody 
knows. 

L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to 
make tea. 

(The house rises; but of course the Lecturer 
wanted to be forced to lecture again, and 
was.) 



LECTURE II. 
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 



23 



LECTURE II. 

THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 

In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody 
has been summoned by ringing of the great 
bell. 

L. So you have all actually come to hear 
about crystallization! I cannot conceive why, 
unless the little ones think that the discussion 
may involve some reference to sugar-candy. 

(Symptoms of high displeasure among the 
younger members of council. Isabel frowns 
severely at L. , and shakes her head violently.) 

My dear children, if you knew it, you are 
yourselves, at this moment, as you sit in your 
ranks, nothing, in the eye of a mineralogist, 
but a lovely group of rosy sugar-candy, 
arranged by atomic forces. And even admit- 
ting you to be something more, you have cer- 
tainly been crystallizing without knowing it. 
Did not I hear a great hurrying and whisper- 
ing, ten minutes ago, when you were late in 
from the playground ; and thought you would 
not all be quietly seated by the time I was 
ready: — besides some discussion about places — 
something about ''it's not being fair that the 
little ones should always be nearest?" Well, 
you were then all being crystallized. When 
you ran in from the garden, and against one 
another in the passages, you were in what 

25 



26 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

mineralogists would call a state of solution, 
and gradual confluence ; when you got seated 
in those orderly rows, each in her proper 
place, you became crystalline. That is just 
what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can, 
whenever they get disordered: they get into 
order again as soon as may be. 

I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and 
say, "But we know our places; how do the 
atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dis- 
pute about our places; do the atoms — (and, 
besides, we don't like being compared to atoms 
at all) — never dispute about theirs?" Two 
wise questions these, if you had a mind to put 
them ! it was long before I asked them myself, 
of myself. And I will not call you atoms any 
more. May I call you — let me see — "primary 
molecules"? (General dissent indicated in 
subdued but decisive murmurs.) No! not 
even, in familiar Saxon, "dust"? 

(Pause, with expression on faces of sorrow- 
ful doubt ; Lily gives voice to the general sen- 
timent in a timid "Please don't.") 

No, children, I won't call you that; and 
mind, as you grow up, that you do not get 
into an idle and wicked habit of calling your- 
selves that. You are something better than 
dust, and have other duties to do than ever 
dust can do ; and the bonds of affection you 
will enter into are better than merely "get- 
ting into order." But see to it, on the other 
hand, that you always behave at least as well 
as "dust:" remember, it is only on compulsion, 
and while it has no free permission to do as it 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 27 

likes, that it ever gets out of order; but some- 
times, with some of us, the compulsion has to 
be the other way — hasn't it? (Remonstratory 
whispers, expressive of opinion that the 
Lecturer is becoming too personal.) I'm not 
looking at anybody in particular — indeed I 
am not. Nay, if you blush so, Kathleen, how 
can one help looking? We'll go back to the 
atoms. 

"How do they know their places?'' you 
asked, or should have asked. Yes, and they 
have to do much more than know them : they 
have to find their way to them, and that 
quietly and at once, without running against 
each other. 

We may, indeed, state it briefly thus : — Sup- 
pose you have to build a castle, with towers 
and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a 
given shape, and that these bricks are all lying 
in a huge heap at the bottom, in utter con- 
fusion, upset out of carts at random. You 
would have to draw a great many plans, and 
count all your bricks, and be sure you had 
enough for this and that tower, before you 
began, and then you would have to lay youf 
foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, 
slowly. 

But how would you be astonished in these 
melancholy days, when children don't read 
children's books, nor believe any more in 
fairies, if suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in 
a bright brick-red gown, were to rise in the 
midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap 
of them with her wand, and say, "Bricks, 



28 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

bricks, to your places \" and then you saw in 
an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like 
a swarm of red bees, and — you have v been 
used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to 
think that strange enough, but now you would 
see the honeycomb make itself! — You want to 
ask something, Florrie, by the look of your 
eyes. 

Florrie. Are they turned into real bees, 
with stings? 

L. No, Florrie ; you are only to fancy fly- 
ing bricks, as you saw the slates flying from 
the roof the other day in the storm; only 
those slates didn't seem to know where they 
were going, and, besides, were going where 
they had no business: but my spellbound 
bricks, though they have no wings, and, what 
is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their 
way in the air just where they should settle, 
into towers and roofs, each flying to his place 
and fastening there at the right moment, so 
that every other one shall fit to him in his 
turn. 

Lily. But who are the fairies, then, who 
build the crystals? 

L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who 
builds much more than crystals; but she 
builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her 
building a pyramid, the other day, as she used 
to do, for the Pharaohs. 

Isabel. But that was only a dream? 

L. Some dreams are truer than some wak- 
ings, Isabel; but I won't tell it you unless you 
like. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 29 

Isabel. Oh, please, please. 

L. You are all such wise children, there's 
no talking to you; you won't believe any- 
thing. 

Lily. No, we are not wise, and we will 
believe anything, when you say we ought. 

L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, 
do you recollect that evening when we had 
been looking at your old cave by Cumse, and 
wondering why you didn't live there still: and 
then we wondered how old you were; and 
Egypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody else 
could tell but she; and you laughed — I 
thought very gayly for a Sibyl — and said you 
would harness a flock of cranes for us, and we 
might fly over to Egypt if we liked, and see. 

Sibyl. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find 
out after all ! 

L. Why, you know, Egypt has been just 
doubling that third pyramid of hers; and mak- 
ing a new entrance into it ; and a fine entrance 
it was! First, we had to go through an ante- 
room, which had both its doors blocked up with 
stones; and then we had three granite port- 
cullises to pull up, one after another; and the 
moment we had got under them, Egypt signed 
to somebody above; and down they came 
again behind us, with a roar like thunder, only 
louder; then we got into a passage fit for 
nobody but rats, and Egypt wouldn't go any 
further herself, but said we might go on if we 
liked; and so we came to a hole in the pave- 
ment, and then to a granite trap-door — and 
then we thought we had gone quite far 



30 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed 
at us. 

Egypt. You would not have had me take 
my crown off, and stoop all the way down a 
passage fit only for rats? 

L. It was not the crown, Egypt — you know 
that very well. It was the flounces that would 
not let you go any farther. I suppose, how- 
ever, you wear them as typical of the inunda- 
tion of the Nile, so it is all right. 

Isabel. Why didn't you take me with you? 
Where rats can go, mice can. I wouldn't have 
come back. 

L. No, mousie; you would have gone on 
by yourself, and you might have waked one 
of Pasht's cats, and it would have eaten you. 
I was very glad you were not there. But 
after all this I suppose the imagination of the 
heavy granite blocks and the underground 
ways had troubled me, and dreams are often 
shaped in a strange opposition to the impres- 
sions that have caused them ; and from all that 
we had been reading in Bunsen about stones 
that couldn't be lifted with levers, I began 
to dream about stones that lifted themselves 
with wings. 

Sibyl. Now you must just tell us all 
about it. 

L. I dreamed that I was standing beside 
the lake, out of whose clay the bricks were 
made for the great pyramid of Asychis. They 
had just been all finished, and were lying by 
the lake margin, in long ridges, like waves. 
It was near evening; and as I looked toward 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 31 

the sunset, I saw a thing: like a dark pillar 
standing where the rock of the desert stoops to 
the Nile valley. I did not know there was a 
pillar there, and wondered at it ; and it grew 
larger, and glided nearer, becoming like the 
form of a man, but vast, and it did not move 
its feet, but glided, like a pillar of sand. 
And as it drew nearer, I looked by chance past 
it, toward the sun; and saw a silver cloud, 
which was of all the clouds closest to the sun 
(and in one place crossed it), draw itself back 
from the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and 
shot toward the dark pillar; leaping in an 
arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I 
thought it was lightning; but when it came 
near the shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down 
beside it, and changed into the shape of a 
woman, very beautiful, and with a strength of 
deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to 
the feet with a white robe ; and above that, to 
her knees, by the cloud which I had seen 
across the sun: but all the golden ripples of it 
had become plumes, so that it had changed 
into two bright wings like those of a vulture, 
which wrapped round her to her knees. She 
had a weaver's shuttle hanging over her 
shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left 
hand, arrows, tipped with fire. 

Isabel (clapping her hands). Oh! it was 
Neith, it was Neith ! I know now. 

L. Yes; it was Neith herself; and as the 
two great spirits came nearer to me, I saw 
they were the Brother and Sister — the pillared 
shadow was the greater Pthah. And I heard 



32 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

them speak, and the sound of their words was 
like a distant singing. I could not understand 
the words one by one; yet their sense came 
to me ; and so I knew that Neith had come 
down to see her brother's work, and the work 
that he had put into the mind of the king to 
make his servants do. And she was dis- 
pleased at it ; because she saw only pieces of 
dark clay; and no porphyry, nor marble, nor 
any fair stone that men might engrave the 
figures of the gods upon. And she blamed her 
brother, and said, "Oh, Lord of truth! is this 
then thy will, that men should mold only four- 
square pieces of clay, and the forms of the 
gods no more?" Then the Lord of truth 
sighed, and said, "Oh! sister, in truth they 
do not love us; why should they set up our 
images? Let them do what they may, and not 
lie — let them make their clay four-square ; and 
labor; and perish. " 

Then Neith's dark blue eyes grew darker, 
and she said, "Oh, Lord of truth! why should 
they love us? their love is vain; or fear us? 
for their fear is base. Yet let them testify of 
us, that they knew we lived forever. " 

But the Lord of truth answered, "They 
know, and yet they know not. Let them keep 
silence; for their silence only is truth." 

But Neith answered, "Brother, wilt thou 
also make league with Death, because Death 
is true? Oh! thou potter, who hast cast these 
human things from thy wheel, many to dis- 
honor, and few to honor; wilt thou not let 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 33 

them so much as see my face ; but slay them 
in slavery?" 

But Pthah only answered: "Let them 
build, sister, let them build." 

And Neith answered, "What shall they 
build, if I build not with them?" 

And Pthah drew with his measuring rod 
upon the sand. And I saw suddenly drawn 
on the sand the outlines of great cities, and 
of vaults, and domes, and aqueducts, and 
bastions, and towers, greater than obelisks, 
covered with black clouds. And the wind 
blew ripples of sand amidst the lines that 
Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the 
marching of men. But I saw that wherever 
Neith looked at the lines, they faded and were 
effaced. 

"Oh Brother!" she said at last, "what is 
this vanity? If I, who am lady of wisdom, do 
not mock the children of men, why shouldst 
though mock them who art Lord of truth?" 
But Pthah answered, "They thought to bind 
me; and they shall be bound. They shall 
labor in the fire for vanity. " 

And Neith said, looking at the sand, 
"Brother, there is no true labor here — there 
is only weary life and wasteful death. " 

And Pthah answered, "Is it not truer labor, 
sister, than thy sculpture of dreams?" 

Then Neith smiled; and stopped suddenly. 

She looked to the sun ; its edge touched the 
horizon edge of the desert. Then she looked 
to the long heaps of pieces of clay that lay, 
each with its blue shadow, by the lake shore. 

3 Ethics 



84 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

"Brother," she said, "how long will this 
pyramid of thine be in building?" 

"Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the 
years ten times, before the summit is laid." 

"Brother, thou knowest not how to teach 
thy children to labor/' answered Neith, "Look! 
I must follow Phre beyond Atlas; shall I build 
your pyramid for you before he goes down?" 
And Pthah answered, "Yea, sister, if thou 
canst put thy winged shoulders to such work." 
And Neith drew herself to her height; and I 
heard a clashing pass through the plumes of 
her wings, and the asp stood up to her helmet, 
and fire gathered in her eye. And she took 
one of the flaming arows out of the sheaf in 
her left hand, and stretched it out over the 
heaps of clay. And they rose up like flights 
of locusts, and spread themselves in the air, so 
that it grew dark in a moment. Then Neith 
designed them places with her arrow point; 
and they drew into ranks, like dark clouds laid 
level at morning. Then Neith pointed 
with her arrow to the north, andto the south, 
and to the east, and to the west; and the flying 
motes of earth drew asunder into four great 
ranked crowds; and stood, one in the north, 
and one in the south, and one in the east, and 
one in the west — one against another. Then 
Neith spread her wings wide for an instant, 
and closed them with a sound like the sound 
of a rushing sea; and waved her hand towards 
the foundation of the pyramid, where it was 
laid on the brow of the desert. And the four 
flocks drew together and sank down, like sea- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 35 

birds settling to a level rock, and when they 
met, there was a sudden flame, as broad as 
the pyramid, and as high as the clouds; and 
it dazzled me ; and I closed my eyes for an 
instant; and when I looked again the pyramid 
stood on its rock, perfect ; and purple with the 
light from the edge of the sinking sun. 

The younger children variously pleased. 
I'm so glad! How nice! But what did Pthah 
say? 

L. Neith did not wait to hear what he would 
say. When I turned back to look at her she 
was gone; and I only saw the level white 
cloud form itself again close to the arch of the 
sun as it sank. And as the last edge of the 
sun disappeared, the form of Pthah faded into 
a mighty shadow, and so passed away. 

Egypt. And was Neith's pyramid left? 

L. Yes; but you could not think, Egypt, 
what a strange feeling of utter loneliness came 
over me when the presence of the two gods 
passed away. It seemed as if I had never 
known what it was to be alone before; and 
the unbroken line of the desert was terrible. 

Egypt. I used to feel that, when I was 
queen: sometimes I had to carve gods for 
company, all over my palace. I would fain 
have seen real ones, if I could. 

L. But listen a moment yet, for that was 
not quite all my dream. The twilight drew 
swiftly to the dark, and I could hardly see the 
great pyramid ; when there came a heavy mur- 
muring sound in the air; and a horned beetle, 
with terrible claws, fell on the sand at my feet, 



36 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

with a blow like the beat of a hammer. Then 
it stood up on its hind claws, and waved its 
pincers at me: and its four claws became 
strong arms, and hands; one grasping real iron 
pincers, and the other a huge hammer; and it 
had a helmet on its head, without any eyelet 
holes that I could see. And its two hind claws 
became strong crooked legs, with feet bent 
inwards. And so there stood by me a dwarf, 
in glossy black armor, ribbed and embossed 
like a beetle's back, leaning on his hammer. 
And I could not speak for wonder; but he 
spoke with a murmur like the dying away of a 
beat upon a bell. He said, "I will make 
Neith's great pyramid small. I am the lower 
Pthah; and have power over fire. I can 
wither the strong things, and strengthen the 
weak ; and everything that is great I can make 
small, and everything that is little I can make 
great." Then he turned to the angle of the 
pyramid and limped towards it. And the 
pyramid grew deep purple; and then red like 
blood, and then pale rose-color like fire. And 
I saw that it glowed with fire from within. 
And the lower Pthah touched it with the hand 
that held the pincers; and it sank down like 
the sand in an hour-glass, — then drew itself 
together, and sank, still, and became nothing, 
it seemed to me; but the armed dwarf stooped 
down, and took it into his hand, and brought 
it to me saying, " Everything that is great I 
can make like this pyramid; and give into 
men's hands to destroy." And I saw that he 
had a little pyramid in his hand, with as many 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 37 

courses in it as the large one ; and built like 
that, — only so small. And because it glowed 
still, I was afraid to touch it; but Pthah said, 
14 Touch it — for I have bound the fire within it 
so that it cannot burn. M So I touched it, and 
took it into my own hand; and it was cold; 
only red, like a ruby. And Pthah laughed, 
and became like a beetle again, and buried 
himself in the sand, fiercely; throwing it back 
over his shoulders. And it seemed to me as if 
he would draw me down with him into the 
sand; and I started back, and w r oke holding 
the little pyramid so fast in my hand that it 
hurt me. 

Egypt. Holding what in your hand? 

L. The little pyramid. 

Egypt. Neith's pyramid? 

L. Neith's, I believe; though not built for 
Asychis. I know only that it is a little rosy 
transparent pyramid, built of more courses of 
bricks than I can count, it being made so 
small. You don't believe me, of course, 
Egyptian infidel; but there it is. (Giving 
crystal of rose Fluor.) 

(Confused examination by crowded aud- 
ience, over each other's shoulders and under 
each other's arms. Disappointment begins to 
manifest itself.) 

Sibyl (not quite knowing why she and others 
are disappointed). But you showed us this the 
other day. 

L. Yes ; but you would not look at it the 
other day. 



38 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Sibyl. But was all that fine dream only 
about this? 

L. W hat finer thing could a dream be about 
than this? It is small, if you will; but when 
you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas 
of smallness and largeness pass away. The 
making of this pyramid was in reality just as 
wonderful as the dream I have been telling 
you, and just as incomprehensible. It was 
not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand 
things are done as swiftly. When Neith makes 
crystals of snow it needs a great deal more 
marshaling of the atoms, by her flaming ar- 
rows, than it does to make crystals like this 
one; and that is done in a moment. 

Egypt. But how you do puzzle us! Why 
do you say Neith does it? You don't mean 
that she is a real spirit, do you? 

L. What I mean, is of little consequence. 
What the Egyptians meant, who called her 
'Neith," — or Homer, who called her "At- 
hena," — or Solomon, who called her by a word 
which the Greeks render as "Sophia," you 
must judge for yourselves. But her testimony 
is always the same, and all nations have re- 
ceived it: "I was by Him as one brought up 
with Him, and I was daily His delight; rejoic- 
ing in the habitual parts of the earth, and my 
delights were with the sons of men." 

Mary. But is not that only a personifi- 
cation? 

L. If it be, what will you gain by unper* 
sonifying it, or what right have you to do so? 
Cannot you accept the image given you, in its 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 39 

life; and listen, like children, to the words 
which chiefly belong to you as children: "I 
love them that love me, and those that seek me 
early shall find me?" 

(They are all quiet for a minute or two ; 
questions begin to appear in their eyes. ) 

I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take 
that rose- crystal away with you, and think. 



LECTURE III. 
THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 



41 



LECTURE III. 

THE CRYSTAL LIFE. 

A very dull Lecture, willfully brought upon 
themselves by the elder children. Some of 
the young ones have, however, managed to 
get in by mistake. Scene, the school-room. 
L. So I am to stand up here merely to be 
asked questions, to-day, Miss Mary, am I? 

Mary. Yes; and you must answer them 
plainly; without telling us any more stories. 
You are quite spoiling the children : the poor 
little things' heads are turning round like 
kaleidoscopes; and they don't know in the 
least what you mean. Nor do we old ones, 
either, for that matter; to-day you must really 
tell us nothing but facts. 

L. I am sworn; but you won't like it a bit. 

Mary. Now, first of all, what do you mean 

by ''bricks"? — Are the smallest particles of 

minerals all of some accurate shape, like 

bricks? 

L. I do not know, Miss Mary; I do not 
even know if anybody knows. The smallest 
atoms which are visibly and practically put 
together to make large crystals, may better 
be described as ''limited in fixed directions" 
than as "of fixed forms." But I can tell you 
nothing clear about ultimate atoms; you will 
find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, of 

43 



44 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

little spheres, available for all the uses you will 
have to put it to. 

Mary. Well, it's very provoking ; one seems 
always to be stopped just when one is coming 
to the very thing one wants to know. 

L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to 
know anything but what is easily and assuredly 
knowable. There's no end to it. If I could 
show you, or myself, a group of ultimate 
atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifying glass, 
we should both be presently vexed because we 
could not break them in two pieces, and see 
their insides. 

Mary. Well, then, next, what do you mean 
by the flying of the bricks? What is it the 
atoms do, that is like flying? 

L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystal- 
lized, they are really separated from each other, 
like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a 
shoal of fish in the sea; — generally at about 
equal distances. In currents of solutions, or 
at different depths of them, one part may be 
more full of the dissolved atoms than another; 
but, on the whole, you may think of them as 
equidistant, like the spots in the print of your 
gown. If they are separated by force of heat 
only, the substance is said to be melted ; if 
they are separated by any other substance, as 
particles of sugar by water, they are said to be 
4 'dissolved." Note this distinction carefully, 
all of you. 

Dora. I will be very particular. When 
next you tell me there isn't sugar enough in 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 45 

your tea, I will say, "It is not yet dissolved, 
sir. 

L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss 
Dora; and that's the present parliament, if the 
members get too sauc}-. 

(Dora folds her hands and casts down her 
eyes.) 

L. (proceeds in state). Now, Miss Mary 
you know already, I believe, that nearly every- 
thing will melt, under a sufficient heat, like 
wax. Limestone melts (under pressure) ; sand 
melts; granite melts; the lava of a volcano is 
a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: 
and any melted substance nearly always, if not 
always, crystallizes as it cools; the more 
slowly, the more perfectly. Water melts at 
what we call the freezing, but might just as 
wisely, though not as conveniently, call the 
melting, point; and radiates as it cools into 
the most beautiful of all known crystals. 
Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystal- 
lize, if you will let it cool slowly enough, in 
stars, much like snow. Gold needs more heat 
to melt it, but crystallizes also exquisitely, as 
I will presently show you. Arsenic and sul- 
phur crystallize from their vapors. Now in 
any of these cases, either of melted, dissolved, 
or vaporous bodies, the particles are usually 
separated from each other, either by heat or by 
an intermediate substance ; and in crystallizing 
they are both brought nearer to each other, 
and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible : 
the essential part of the business being not the 
bringing together, but the packing. Who 



46 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

packed your trunk for you, last holidays, 
Isabel? 

Isabel. Lily does, always. 

L. And how much can you allow for Lily's 
good packing, in guessing what will go into the 
trunk? 

Isabel. Oh ! I bring twice as much as the 
trunk holds. Lily always gets everything in. 

Lily. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what 
a time it takes! and since you've had those 
great hard buttons on your frocks, I can't do 
anything with them. Buttons won't go any- 
where, you know. 

L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only 
knew what a time it takes; and I wish any of 
us knew what a time crystallization takes, for 
that is consummately fine packing. The par- 
ticles of the rock are thrown down, just as 
Isabel brings her things — in a heap; and in- 
numerable Lilies, not of the valley, but of the 
rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a 
time! 

However, the best — out and out the best — 
way of understanding the thing, is to crystal- 
lize yourselves. 

The Audience. Ourselves! 

L. Yes; not merely as you did the other 
day, carelessly on the school-room forms; but 
carefully and finely, out in the playground. 
You can play at crystallization there as much 
as you please. 

Kathleen and Jessie. Oh! how? — how? 

L. First, you must put yourselves together 
as close as you can, in the middle of the grass, 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 47 

and form for first practice, any figure you 
like. 

Jessie. Any dancing figure, do you mean? 

L. No ; I mean a square, or a cross, or a 
diamond. Any figure you like, standing close 
together. You had better outline it first on 
the turf, with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see 
that it is rightly drawn; then get into it and 
enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are 
all quite in it, and no empty space left. 

Dora. Crinoline and all? 

L. The crinoline may stand eventually for 
rough crystalline surface, unless you pin it in ; 
and then you may make a polished crystal of 
yourselves. 

Lily. Oh, we'll pin it in — we'll pin it in! 

L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let 
every one note her place, and who is next her 
on each side ; and let the outsiders count how 
many places they stand from the corners. 

Kathleen. Yes, yes, — and then? 

L. Then you must scatter all over the play- 
ground — right over it from side to side, and 
end to end; and put yourselves all at equal 
distances from each other, everywhere. You 
needn't mind doing it very accurately, but so 
as to be nearly equidistant ; not less than about 
three yards apart from each other on every 
side. 

Jessie. We can easily cut pieces of string 
of equal length, to hold. And then? 

L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody 
walk, at the same rate, towards the outlined 
figure in the middle. You had better sing as 



48 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

you walk; that will keep you in good time. 
And as you close in towards it, let each take 
her place, and the next comers fit themselves 
in beside the first ones, till you are all in the 
figure again. 

Kathleen. Oh! how we shall run against 
each other. What fun it will be ! 

L. No, no, Miss Kate; I can't allow any 
running against each other. The atoms never 
do that, whatever human creatures do. You 
must all know your places, and find your way 
to them without jostling. 

Lily. But how ever shall we do that? 

Isabel. Mustn't the ones in the middle be 
the nearest, and the outside ones farther off — 
when we go away to scatter, I mean? 

L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep 
your order ; you will soon find out how to do 
it; it is only like soldiers forming square, 
except that each must stand still in her place 
as she reaches it, and the others come round 
her; and you will have much more compli- 
cated figures, afterwards to form, than squares. 

Isabel. I'll put a stone at my place: then I 
shall know it. 

L. You might each nail a bit of paper to 
the turf, at your place, with your name upon 
it; but it would be of no use, for if you don't 
know your places, you will make a fine piece 
of business of it, while you are looking for 
your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head 
and eyes, and a brain (all of them very good 
and serviceable of their kind, as such things 
go), you think you cannot know your place, 




M 'Was ever anything so provoking!'" — Page 63. 

The Ethics of the Dust. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 49 

without a stone at it, after examining it well, 
— how do you think each atom knows its place, 
when it never was there before, and there's 
no stone at it? 

Isabel. But does every atom know its place? 

L. How else could it get there? 

Mary. Are they not attracted into their 
places? 

L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at 
equal intervals ; and then imagine any kind of 
attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, 
to exist between the spots, and try how, on 
that permitted supposition, you can attract 
them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the 
middle of the paper 

Mary (having tried it). Yes; I see that I 
cannot: — one would need all kinds of attrac- 
tions, in different ways, at different places. 
But you do not mean that the atoms are 
alive? 

L. What is it to be alive? 

Dora. There now; you're going to be pro- 
voking, I know. 

L. I do not see why it should be provoking 
to be asked what it is to be , alive. Do you 
think you don't know whether you are alive 
or not? 

(Isabel skips to the end of the room and 
back,) 

L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and 
you and I may call that being alive: but a 
modern philosopher calls it being in a "mood 
of motion." It requires a certain quantity of 
heat to take you to the sideboard ; and exactly 

4 Ethics 



50 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

the same quantity to bring you back again. 
That's all. 

Isabel. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not 
hot. 

L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. 
However, you know, Isabel, you might have 
been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been 
carried round the room, or anywhere else, by 
chemical forces, in the liveliest way. 

Isabel. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried 
myself. 

L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not 
so much to say what makes a thing alive, as 
what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut 
off from the rest of the universe into a Self, 
you begin to be alive. 

Violet (indignant). Oh, surely — surely that 
cannot be so. Is not all the life of the soul in 
communion, not separation? 

L. There can be no communion where 
there is no distinction. But we shall be in an 
abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't 
look out; and besides, we must not be too 
grand, to-day, for the younger children. 
We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we 
must. (The younger children are not pleased, 
and prepare to remonstrate; but knowing by 
experience, that all conversations in which 
the word ' 'communion" occurs, are unintelli- 
gible, think better of it.) Meantime, for 
broad answer about the atoms. I do not think 
we should use the word "life," of any energy 
which does not belong to a given form. A 
seed, or an egg, or a young animal, are pro- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 51 

perly called "alive" with respect to the force 
belonging to these forms, which consistently 
develops that form, and no other. But the 
force which crystallizes a mineral appears to 
be chiefly external, and it does not produce 
an entirely determinate and individual form, 
limited in size, but only an aggregation, in 
which some limiting laws must be observed. 

Mary. But I do not see much difference, 
that way, between a crystal and a tree. 

L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy 
in a living thing implies a continual change 
in its elements; and a period for its end. So 
you may define life by its attached negative, 
death ; and still more by its attached positive, 
birth. But I won't be plagued any more about 
this, just now; if you choose to think the crys- 
tals alive, do, and welcome. Rocks have 
always been called "living" in their native 
place. 

Mary. There's one question more; then I've 
done. 

L. Only one? 

Mary. Only one. 

L. But if it is answered won't it turn into 
two? 

Mary. No; I think it will remain single, 
and be comfortable. 

L. Let me hear it. 

Mary. You know, we are to crystallize our- 
selves out of the whole playground. Now, 
what playground have the minerals? Where 
are they scattered before they are crystallized ; 
and where are the crystals generally made? 



52 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. That sounds to me more like three ques- 
tions than one, Mary. If it is only one, it is a 
wide one. 

Mary. I did not say anything 1 about the 
width of it. 

L. Well, I must keep it within the best 
compass I can. When rocks either dry from a 
moist state, or cool from a heated state, they 
necessarily alter in bulk ; and cracks, or open 
spaces, form in them in all directions. These 
cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or 
the rock would eventually become a ruinous 
heap. So, sometimes by water, sometimes by 
vapor, sometimes nobody knows how, crystal- 
lizable matter is brought from somewhere, and 
fastens itself in these open spaces, so as to bind 
the rock together again with crystal cement. 
A vast quantity of hollows are formed in lavas 
by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are left in 
bread well-baked. In process of time these 
cavities are generally filled with various crys- 
tals. 

Mary. But where does the crystallizing sub- 
stance come from? 

L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; some- 
times from below or above, through the veins. 
The entire substance of the contracting rock 
may be filled with liquid, pressed into it so as 
to fill every pore; — or with mineral vapor; — 
or it may be so charged at one place, and 
empty at another. There's no end to the 
"may be's." But all that you need fancy, for 
our present purpose, is that hollows in the 
rocks, like the caves in Derbyshire, are trav- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 53 

ersed by liquids or vapor containing certain 
elements in a more or less free or separate 
state, which crystallize on the cave walls. 

Sibyl. There now; — Mary has had all her 
questions answered; it's my turn to have 
mine. 

L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I 
see. I might have guessed as much. 

Dora. I'm sure you ask us questions enough ! 
How can you have the heart, when you dislike 
so to be asked them yourself? 

L. My dear child, if people do not answer 
questions, it does not matter how many they 
are asked, because they've no trouble with 
them. Now, when I ask you questions, I 
never expect to be answered; but when you 
ask me, you always do; and it's not fair. 

Dora. Very well, we shall understand, next 
time. 

Sibyl. No, but seriously, we all want to ask 
one thing more, quite dreadfully. 

L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite 
dreadfully; but you'll have your own way, of 
course. 

Sibyl. We none of us understand about the 
lower Pthah. It was not merely yesterday; 
but in all we have read about him in Wilkin- 
son, or in any book, we cannot understand 
what the Egyptians put their god into that ugly 
little deformed shape for. 

L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question; 
because I can answer anything I like to 
that. 

Egypt. Anything you like will do quite 



54 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

well for us; we shall be pleased with the 
answer, if you are. 

L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious 
queen; for I must begin by the statement that 
queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, 
in those days, as much as some queens dislike 
sewing to-day. 

Egypt. Now, it's too bad! and just when I 
was trying to say the civilest thing I could! 

L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you 
disliked sewing so? 

Egypt. Did not I show you how the thread 
cuts my fingers? and I always get cramp, 
somehow, in my neck, if I sew long. 

L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens 
thought everybody got cramp in their neck, if 
they sewed long ; and that thread always cut 
people's fingers. At all events every kind of 
manual labor was despised both by them, and 
the Greeks; and, while they owned the real 
good and fruit of it, they yet held it a degra- 
dation to all who practiced it. Also, knowing 
the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that 
the special practice necessary to bring any 
manual art to perfection strengthened the body 
distortedly; one energy or member gaining at 
the expense of the rest. They especially 
dreaded and despised any kind of work that 
had to be done near fire ; yet feeling what they 
owed to it in metal-work, as the basis of all 
other work, they expressed this mixed rever- 
ence and scorn in the varied types of the lame 
Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah. 

Sibyl. But what did you mean by making 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 55 

him say, "Everything great I can make small, 
and everything small great"? 

L. I had my own separate meaning in that. 
We have seen in modern times the power of 
the lower Phtah developed in a separate way, 
which no Greek nor Egyptian could have con- 
ceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless 
manual labor to conceive everything as sub- 
jected to it; and in reality to disgrace and 
diminish all that is so subjected, aggrandizing 
itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense 
of all noble things. I heard an orator, and a 
good one too, at the Working Men's College, 
the other day, make a great point in a descrip- 
tion of our railroads; saying, with grandly 
conducted emphasis, "They have made man 
greater, and the world less." His working 
audience were mightily pleased ; they thought 
it so very fine a thing to be made bigger them- 
selves; and all the rest of the world less. I 
should have enjoyed asking them (but it would 
have been a pity — they were so pleased), how 
much less they would like to have the world 
made; — and whether, at present, those of 
them really felt the biggest men, who lived in 
the least houses. 

Sibyl. But then, why did you make Pthah 
say that he could make weak things strong, and 
small things great? 

L. My dear, he is a boaster and self- 
assertor, by nature; but it is so far true. For 
instance, we used to have a fair in our neigh- 
borhood — a very fine fair we thought it. You 
never saw such an one ; but if you look at the 



56 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

engraving of Turner's "St. Catherine's Hill/* 
you will see what it was like. There were 
curious booths, carried on poles; and peep- 
shows; and music, with plenty of drums and 
cymbals; and much barley-sugar and ginger- 
bread, and the like: and in the alleys of this 
fair the London populace would enjoy them- 
selves, after their fashion, very thoroughly. 
Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one 
day; he made the wooden poles into iron ones, 
and put them across, like his own crooked legs, 
so that you always fall over them if you don't 
look where you are going; and he turned all 
the canvas into panes of glass, and put it up 
on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little 
booths into one great booth ; — and people 
said it was very fine, and a new style of archi- 
tecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was 
ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very true. 
And then the little Pthah set to work to put 
fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh 
bulls afresh, with the blackest eyes he could 
paint (because he had none himself), and he' 
got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and 
gilded their wings like his gingerbread of 
old times; and he sent for everything else he 
could think of, and put it in his booth. There 
are the casts of Niobe and her children ; and 
the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caff res and 
New-Zealanders; and the Shakespeare House; 
and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin ; 
and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of 
shops, and buns, and beer; and all the little 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 57 

Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so 
sublime ! 

Sibyl. Now, do you mean to say you never 
go to these Crystal Palace concerts; they're 
as good as good can be. 

L. I don't go to the thundering things with 
a million of bad voices in them. When I want 
a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Ber- 
tram and Counselor Pleydell to sing "We be 
three poor Mariners" to me; then I've no head- 
ache next morning. But I do go to the smaller 
concerts, when I can ; for they are very good, 
as you say, Sibyl : and I always get a reserved 
seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I 
am sure I can see the kettle-drummer drum. 

Sibyl. Now do be serious, for one minute. 

L. I am serious — never was more so. You 
know one can't see the modulation of violinists' 
fingers, but one can see the vibration of the 
drummer's hand: and it's lovely. 

Sibyl. But fancy going to a concert, not to 
hear, but to see! 

L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right 
thing, I believe, is to go there to talk. I con- 
fess, however, that in most music, when very 
well done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly 
interesting part of the business. I'm always 
thinking how good it would be for the fat, 
supercilious people, who care so little for their 
half-crown's worth, to be set to try and do a 
half-crown's worth of anything like it. 

Mary. But surely that Crystal Palace is a 
great good and help to the people of London? 

L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or 



58 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

was, my dear, but they are spoiling that with 
smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as 
they call it) is a better place for them, by much, 
than the old fair; and it is always there, 
instead of for three days only ; and it shuts up 
at proper hours of night. And good use may 
be made of the things in it, if you know how: 
but as for its teaching the people, it will teach 
them nothing but the lowest of the lower 
Pthah's work — nothing but hammer and tongs. 
I saw a wonderful piece of his doing in the 
place, only the other day. Some unhappy 
metal-worker — I am not sure if it was not a 
metal-working firm — had taken three years to 
make a Golden Eagle. 

Sibyl. Of real gold? 

L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of 
their foul patent metals — it is no matter what. 
I meant a model of our chief British eagle. 
Every feather was made separately; and every 
filament of every feather separately, and so 
joined on; and all the quills modeled of the 
right length and right section, and at last the 
whole cluster of them fastened together. You 
know, children, I don't think much of my own 
drawing ; but take my proud word for once, 
that when I go to the Zoological Gardens, and 
happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, 
and the Gray Harpy will sit, without screwing 
his head round, for thirty seconds, — I can do 
a better thing of him in that time than the 
three years' work of this industrious firm. 
For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is my 
object, — not myself; and during the three 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 59 

years, the firm's object, in every fiber of bronze 
it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That 
is the true meaning of the little Pthah's hav- 
ing no eyes — he can see only himself. The 
Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of 
him; our northern ground beetle is a truer 
one. It is beautiful to see it at work, gather- ' 
ing its treasures (such as they are) into little 
round balls; and pushing them home with the 
strong wrong end of it, — head downmost all 
the way, — like a modern political economist 
with his ball of capital, declaring that a nation 
can stand on its vices better than on its virtues. 
But away with you, children, now, for I'm 
getting cross. 

Dora. I'm going downstairs; I shall take 
care, at any rate, that there are no little Pthahs 
in the kitchen cupboards. 



LECTURE IV. 
THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 



61 



LECTURE IV. 

THE CRYSTAL ORDERS. 

A working Lecture in the large Schoolroom ; 
with experimental Interludes. The great 
bell has rung unexpectedly. 

Kathleen (entering disconsolate, though 
first at the summons). Oh dear, oh dear, 
what a day ! Was ever anything so provoking ! 
just when we wanted to crystallize ourselves; — 
and I'm sure it's going to rain all day long. 

L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an 
Irish way with it. But I don't see why Irish 
girls should also look so dismal. Fancy that 
you don't want to crystallize yourselves: you 
didn't, the day before yesterday, and you 
were not unhappy when it rained then. 

Florrie. Ah ! but we do want to to-day; and 
the rain's so tiresome. 

L. That is to say, children, that because 
you are all the richer by the expectation of 
playing at a new game, you choose to make 
yourselves unhappier than when you had 
nothing to look forward to, but the old ones. 

Isabel. But then, to have to wait — wait — 
wait; and before we've tried it; — and perhaps 
it will rain to-morrow, too! 

L. It may also rain the day after to-mor- 
row. We can make ourselves uncomfortable 

63 



64 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. You 
may stick perhapses into your little minds, 
like pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the 
Lilliputians made Gulliver with their arrows, 
when he would not lie quiet 

Isabel. But what are we to do to-day? 

L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver 
when he saw there was nothing better to be 
done. And to practice patience. I can tell 
you, children, that requires nearly as much 
practicing as music; and we are continually 
losing our lessons when the master comes. 
Now, to-day, here's a Lice, little adagio lesson 
for us, if we play it properly. 

Isabel. But I don't like that aort of lesson. 
I can't play it properly. 

L. Can 3 ou play a Mozart sonata yet, Isa- 
bel? The more need to practice. All one's 
life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, 
and :'n tune. But there must be no hurry, 

Kathleen. I'm sure there'^: no music in 
stopping in on a rainy day. 

L. There's no music in a "rest, " Katie, 
that I know of; but there's the making of 
music in it. And people are always missing 
that part of the life-melody ; and scrambling 
on without counting — not that it's easy to 
count; but nothing on which so much depends 
ever is easy. People are always talking of per- 
severance, and courage, and fortitude; but 
patience is the finest and worthiest part of for- 
titude, — and the rarest, too. I know twenty 
persevering girls for one patient one : but it 
is only that twenty-first who can do her work, 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 65 

out and out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at 
the root of all pleasures, as well as of all 
powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, 
when Impatience companions her. 

(Isabel and Lily sit down on the floor and 
fold their hands. The others follow their ex- 
ample.) 

Good children! but that's not quite the 
way of it, neither. Folded hands are not 
necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who 
really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, 
or even runs: she seldom sits; though she may 
sometimes have to do it for many a day, poor 
thing, by monuments; or like Chaucer's, "with 
pale face, upon a hill of sand/' But we are 
not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use 
this calamitous forenoon to choose the shapes 
we are to crystallize into? we know nothing 
about them yet. 

(The pictures of resignation rise from the 
floor not in the patientest manner. General 
applause.) 

Mary (with one or two others). The very 
thing we wanted to ask you about ! 

Lily. We looked at the books about crys- 
tals, but they are so dreadful. 

L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little 
dreadfulness, that's a fact: no road to any 
good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and 
the grass; there is rough climbing to be done 
always. But the crystal-books are a little too 
dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall 
have to be content with very little of their help. 
You know, as you cannot stand on each other's 

5 Ethics 



66 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

heads, you can only make yourselves into the 
sections of crystals, — the figures they show 
when they are cut through; and we will 
choose some that will be quite easy. You 
shall make diamonds of yourselves — 

Isabel. Oh, no, no! we won't be diamonds, 
please. 

L. Yes, you shall, Isabel ; they are very 
pretty things, if the jewelers and the kings 
and queens would only let them alone. You 
shall make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies 
of yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish 
diamonds; two of those — with Lily in the 
middle of one, which will be very orderly, of 
course; and Kathleen in the middle of the 
other, for which we will hope the best; and 
you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, 
and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and — 
Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without 
any making. 

Mary. Now, you know, the children will 
be getting quite wild; we must really get 
pencils and paper, and begin properly. 

L. Wait a minute, Miss Mary: I think, as 
we've the schoolroom clear to-day, I'll try to 
give you some notion of the three great orders 
or ranks of crystals, into which all the others 
seem more or less to fall. We shall only want 
one figure a day, in the playground; and that 
can be drawn in a minute: but the general 
Ideas had better be fastened first. I must 
show you a great many minerals ; so let me 
have three tables wheeled into the three win- 
dows, that we may keep our specimens sepa- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 67 

rate ; — we will keep the three orders of crystals 
on separate tables. 

(First Interlude, of pushing and pulling, 
and spreading of baize covers. Violet, not 
particularly minding what she is about, gets 
herself jammed into a corner, and bid to stand 
out of the way; on which she devotes herself 
to meditation.) 

Violet (after interval of meditation). How 
strange it is that everything seems to divide 
into threes! 

L. Everything doesn't divide into threes. 
Ivy won't, though shamrock will; and daisies 
won't, though lilies will. 

Violet. But all the nicest things seem to 
divide into threes. 

L. Violets won't. 

Violet. No; I should think not, indeed! 
But I mean the great things. 

L. I've always heard the globe had four 
quarters. 

Isabel. Well; but you know you said it 
hadn't any quarters at all. So mayn't it 
really be divided into three? 

L. If it were divided into no more than 
three > on the outside of it, Isabel, it would be 
a fine world to live in ; and if it were divided 
into three in the inside of it, it would soon be 
no world to live in at all. 

Dora. We shall never get to the crystals, 
at this rate. (Aside to Mary.) He will get 
off into political economy before we know 
where we are. (Aloud.) But the crystals are 
divided into three, then? 



68 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. No; but there are three general notions 
by which we may best get hold of them. 
Then between these notions there are other 
notions. 

Lily (alarmed). A great many? And shall 
we have to learn them all? 

L. More than a great many — a quite infi- 
nite many. So you cannot learn them all. 

Lily (greatly relieved). Then may we only 
learn the three? 

L. Certainly; unless, when you have got 
those three notions, you want to have some 
more notions; — which would not surprise me. 
But we'll try for the thee, first. Katie, you 
broke your coral necklace this morning? 

Kathleen. Oh! who told you? It was in 
jumping. I'm so sorry! 

L. I'm very glad. Can you fetch me the 
beads of it? 

Kathleen. I've lost some ; here are the rest 
in my pocket, if I can only get them out. 

L. You mean to get them out some day, I 
suppose ; so try now. I want them. 

(Kathleen empties her pocket on the floor. 
The beads disperse. The School disperses also. 
Second Interlude — hunting piece.) 

L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of 
an hour, to Isabel, who comes up from under 
the table with her hair all about her ears and 
the last findable beads in her hand.) Mice are 
useful little things sometimes. Now, mousie, 
I want all those beads crystallized. How 
many ways are there of putting them in order? 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 69 

Isabel. Well, first one would string them, 
I suppose? 

L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot 
string ultimate atoms; but you can put them 
in a row, and then they fasten themselves to- 
gether, somehow, into a long rod or needle. 
We will call these " Needle-crystals. " What 
would be the next way? 

Isabel. I suppose, as we are to get together 
in the playground, when it stops raining, in 
different shapes? 

L. Yes; put the beads together, then, in 
the simplest form you can, to begin with. 
Put them into a square, and pack them close. 

Isabel (after careful endeavor). I can't get 
them closer. 

L. That will do. Now you may see, be- 
forehand, that if you try to throw yourselves 
into square in this confused way, you will 
never know your places; so you had better 
consider every square as made of rods, put 
side by side. Take four beads of equal size, 
first, Isabel; put them into a little square. 
That you may consider as made up of two 
rods of two beads each. Then you can make 
a square a size larger, out of three rods of 
three. Then the next square may be a size 
larger. How many rods, Lily? 

Lily. Four rods of four beads each, I sup- 
pose. 

L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so 
on. But now, look here; make another square 
of four beads again. You see they leave a 
little opening in the center. 



70 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Isabel (pushing two opposite ones closer to- 
gether). Now they don't. 

L. No; but now it isn't a square; and by 
pushing the two together you have pushed the 
two others farther apart. 

Isabel. And yet, somehow, they all seem 
closer than they were! 

L. Yes; for before, each of them only 
touched two of the others, but now each of the 
two in the midle touches the other three. 
Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel ; now 
you have three in a triangle — the smallest tri- 
angle you can make out of the beads. Now 
put a rod of three beads on at one side. So, 
you have a triangle of six beads; but just the 
shape of the first one. Next a rod of four on 
the side of that; and you have a triangle of 
ten beads : then a rod of five on the side of that ; 
and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you 
have a square with five beads on the side, and 
a triangle with five beads on the side; equal- 
sided, therefore, like the square. So, however 
few or many you may be, you may soon learn 
how to crystallize quickly into these two fig- 
ures , which are the foundation of form in 
the commonest, and therefore actually the 
most important as well as in the rarest, and 
therefore, by our esteem, the most important 
minerals of the world. Look at this in my 
hand. 

Violet. Why, it is leaf gold! 

L. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer, 
or rather, not beaten at all, but woven. Be- 
sides, feel the weight of it. There is gold 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 71 

enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if 
it were beaten thin. 

Violet. How beautiful! And it glitters 
like a leaf covered with frost. 

L. You only think it so beautiful because 
you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in 
reality, than a bit of brass: for it is Transyl- 
vanian gold ; and they say there is a foolish 
gnome in the mines there, who is always 
wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys 
all the gold with a little silver. I don't know 
how that may be ; but the silver always is in 
the gold; and if he does it, it's very provok- 
ing of him, for no gold is woven so fine any- 
where else. 

Mary (who has been looking through her 
magnifying glass). But this is not woven. 
This is all made of little triangles. 

L. Say "patched," then, if you must be so 
particular. But if you fancy all those tri- 
angles, small as they are (and many of them 
are infinitely small), made up again of rods, 
and those of grains, as we built our great tri- 
angle of the beads, what word will you take 
for the manufacture? 

May. There's no word — it is beyond words. 

L. Yes; and that would matter little, were 
it not beyond thoughts too. But, at all 
events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, 
not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined 
rocks, will help you to remember the second 
kind of crystals, Leaf -crystals, or Foliated 
crystals; though I show you the form in gold 
first only to make a strong impression on you, 



72 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

for gold is not generally, or characteristically, 
crystallized in leaves; the real type of foliated 
crystals is this thing, Mica; which if you once 
feel well, and break well, you will always know 
again; and you will often have occasion to 
know it, for you will find it everywhere nearly, 
in hill countries. 

Kathleen. If we break it well! May we 
break it? 

L. To powder, if you like. 

(Surrenders plate of brown mica to public 
investigation. Third Interlude. It sustains 
severely philosophical treatment at all hands.) 

Flerrie (to whom the last fragments have 
descended). Always leaves, and leaves, and 
nothing but leaves, or white dust? 

L. That dust itself is nothing but finer 
leaves. 

(Shows them to Florrie through magnifying 
glass.) 

Isabel (peeping over Florrie's shoulder). 
But then this bit under the glass looks like 
that bit out of the glass! If we could break 
this bit under the glass, what would it be like? 

L. It would be all leaves still. 

Isabel. And then if we broke those again? 

L. All less leaves still. 

Isabel (impatient). And if we broke them 
again, and again, and again, and again, and 
again? 

L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, 
if you could only see it. Notice that the little 
flakes differ somewhat from the large ones: 
because I can bend them up and down, and they 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 73 

stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent 
easily a little way, sprang back when you 
let it go, and broke when you tried to bend it 
far. And a large mass would not bend at all. 

Mary. Would that gold leaf separate into 
finer leaves, in the same way? 

L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is 
not a characteristic specimen of a foliated 
crystallization. The latter triangles are por- 
tions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, 
which looks like a black mica ; but you see it 
is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, 
almost accurately, as an intermediate link, in 
crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is 
the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals. 

Mary. Is it iron? I never saw iron so 
bright. 

L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallized: 
from its resemblance to mica, it is often called 
micaceous iron. 

Kathleen. May we break this, too? 

L. No, for I could not easily get such 
another crystal: besides, it would not break 
like the mica; it is much harder. But take 
the glass again, and look at the fineness of the 
jagged edges of the triangles where they lap 
over each other. The gold has the same ; but 
you see them better here, terrace above ter- 
race, countless, and in successive angles, like 
superb fortified bastions. 

May. But all foliated crystals are not made 
of triangles? 

L. Far from it ; mica is occasionally so, but 
usually of hexagons; and here is a foliated 



74 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

crystal made of squares, which will show you 
that the leaves of the rock-land have their 
summer green, as well as their autumnal gold. 

Florrie. Oh! oh! oh! (jumps for joy). 

L. Did you never see a bit of green leaf 
before, Florrie? 

Florrie. Yes, but never so bright as that, 
and not in a stone. 

L. If you will look at the leaves of the 
trees in sunshine after a shower, you will find 
they are much brighter than that ; and surely 
they are none the worse for being on stalks 
instead of in stones? 

Florrie. Yes, but then there are so many 
of them, one never looks, I suppose. 

L. Now you have it, Florrie. 

Violet (sighing). There are so many beaut- 
iful things we never see! 

L. You need not sigh for that, Violet; but 
I will tell you what we should all sigh for — 
that there are so many ugly things we never 
see. 

Violet. But we don't want to see ugly 
things ! 

L. You had better say, "We don't want 
to suffer them." You ought to be glad in 
thinking how much more beauty God has made, 
than human eyes can ever see ; but not glad in 
thinking how much more evil man has made, 
than his own soul can ever conceive, much 
more than his hands can ever heal. 

Violet. I don't understand; — how is that 
like the leaves? 

L. The same law holds in our neglect of 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 75 

multiplied pain, as in our neglect of multi- 
plied beauty. Florrie jumps for joy at sight 
of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown 
stone, and takes more notice of it than of all 
the green in the wood, and you, or I, or any 
of us, would be unhappy if any single human 
creature beside us were in sharp pain ; but we 
can read, at breakfast, day after day, of men 
being killed, and of women and children dying 
of hunger faster than the leaves strew the 
brooks in Vallombrosa; — and then go out to 
play croquet, as if nothing had happened. 

May. But we do not see the people being 
killed or dying. 

L. You did not see your brother, when you 
got the telegram the other day, saying he was 
ill, May; but you cried for him; and played 
no croquet. But we cannot talk of these 
things now ; and what is more, you must let 
me talk straight on, for a little while ; and ask 
no questions till I've done; for we branch 
("exfoliate," I should say, mineralogically) 
always into something else, — though that's 
my fault more than yours, but I must go 
straight on now. You have got a distinct 
notion, I hope, of leaf-crystals; and you see 
the sort of look they have: you can easily 
remember that "folium" is Latin for a leaf, 
and that the separate flakes of mica, or any 
other such stones, are called "folia"; but, 
because mica is the most characteristic of these 
stones, other things that are like it in struct- 
ure are called "micas" ; thus we have Uran- 
mica, which is the green leaf I showed you; 



76 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

and Copper-mica, which is another like it, 
made chiefly of copper; and this foliated iron 
is called "micaceous iron." You have then 
these two great orders, Needle-crystals, made 
(probably) of grains in rows; and Leaf -crystals, 
made (probably) of needles interwoven; now, 
lastly, there are crystals of a third order, in 
heaps, or knots, or masses, which may be 
made either of leaves laid one upon another, 
or of needles bound like Roman fasces; and 
mica itself, when it is well crystallized, puts 
itself into such masses, as if to show us how 
others are made. Here is a brown six-sided 
crystal, quite as beautifully chiseled at the 
sides as any castle tower, but you see it is 
entirely built of folia of mica, one laid above 
another, which break away the moment I 
touch the edge with my knife. Now, here is 
another hexagonal tower, of just the same size 
and color, which I want you to compare with 
the mica carefully; but as I cannot wait for 
3 r ou to do it just now, I must tell you quickly 
what main differences to look for. First, you 
will feel it far heavier than the mica. Then, 
though its surface looks quite micaceous in the 
folia of it when you try them with the knife, 
you will find you cannot break them away 

Kathleen. May I try? 

L. Yes, you mistrusting Katie. Here's my 
strong knife for you. (Experimental pause. 
Kathleen doing her best.) You'll have that 
knife shutting on your finger presently, Kate ; 
and I don't know a girl who would like less to 
have her hand tied up for a week. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 77 

Kathleen (who also does not like to be beaten 
— giving up the knife despondently). What 
can the nasty hard thing be? 

L. It is nothing but indurated clay, Kate : 
very hard set certainly, yet not so hard as it 
might be. If it were thoroughly well crystal- 
lized, you would see none of those micaceous 
fractures; and the stone would be quite red 
and clear, all through. 

Kathleen. Oh, cannot you show us one? 

L. Egypt can, if you ask her; she has a 
beautiful one in the clasp of her favorite 
bracelet. 

Kathleen. Why, that's a ruby! 

L. Well, so is that thing you've been 
scratching at. 

Kathleen. My goodness! (Takes up the 
stone again, very delicately, and drops it. 
General consternation.) 

L. Never mind, Katie ; you might drop it 
from the top of the house, and do it no harm. 
But though you really are a very good girl, 
and as good-natured as anybody can possibly 
be, remember, you have your faults, like 
other people; and, if I were you, the next 
time I wanted to assert anything energetically, 
I would assert it by "my badness," not "my 
goodness." 

Kathleen. Ah, now it's too bad of you! 

L. Well, then, I'll invoke, on occasion, my 
"too-badness. " But you may as well pick up 
the ruby, now you have dropped it ; and look 
carefully at the beautiful hexagonal lines 
which gleam on its surface ; and here is a 



78 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

pretty white sapphire (essentially the same 
stone as the ruby) in which you will see the 
same lovely structure, like the threads of the 
finest white cobweb. I do not know what is 
the exact method of a ruby's construction-, but 
you see by these lines, what fine construction 
there is, even in this hardest of stones (after 
the diamond), which usually appears as a mas- 
sive lump or knot. There is, therefore, no 
real mineralogical distinction between needle 
crystals, and knotted crystals, but practically, 
crystallized masses throw themselves into one 
of the three groups we have been examining 
to-day; and appear either as Needles, as Folia, 
or as Knots; when they are in needles (or 
fibers), they make the stones or rocks formed 
out of them " fibrous' ' ; when they are in folia, 
they make them "foliated"; when they are in 
knots (or grains), "granular." Fibrous rocks 
are comparatively rare, in mass; but fibrous 
minerals are innumerable; and it is often a 
question which really no one but a young lady 
could possibly settle, whether one should call 
the fibers composing them "threads" or 
"needles." Here is amianthus, for instance, 
which is quite as fine and soft as any cotton 
thread you ever sewed with ; and here is sul- 
phide of bismuth, with sharper points and 
brighter luster than your finest needles have; 
and fastened in white webs of quartz more 
delicate than your finest lace; and herelis sul- 
phide of antimony, which looks like mere pur- 
ple wool, but it is all of purple needle crystals, 
and here is red oxide of copper (you must not 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 79 

breathe on it as you look, or you may blow 
some of the films of it off the stone), which is 
simply a woven tissue of scarlet silk. How- 
ever, these finer thread-forms are comparative- 
ly rare, while the bolder and needle like crys- 
tals occur constantly; so that, I believe, 
i4 Needle-crystal" is the best word (the grand 
one is "Acicular" crystal, but Sibyl will tell 
you it is all the same, only less easily under- 
stood; and, therefore, more scientific). Then 
the Leaf-crystals, as I said, form an immense 
mass of foliated rocks; and the Granular crys- 
tals, which are of many kinds, form essentially 
granular or granitic and porphyritic rocks; 
and it is always a point of more interest to me 
(and I think will ultimately be to you), to con- 
sider the causes which force a given mineral 
to take any one of these three general forms, 
than what the peculiar geometrical limitations 
are, belonging to its own crystals. It is more 
interesting to me, for instance, to try and find 
out why the red oxide of copper, usually crys- 
tallizing in cubes or octahedrons makes itself 
exquisitely, out of its cubes, into this red silk 
in one particular Cornish mine, than what are 
the absolutely necessary angles of the octahe- 
dron, which is its common form. At all 
events, that mathematical part of crystallogra- 
phy is quite beyond girls' strength; but these 
questions of the various tempers and manners 
of crystals are not only comprehensible by you, 
but full of the most curious teaching for you. 
For in the fulfilment, to the best of their 
power, cf their adopted form under given cir- 



80 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

cumstances there are conditions entirely- 
resembling those of human ^virtue ; and, in- 
deed, expressible under no term so proper as 
that of the Virtue, or Courage of crystals: — 
which, if you are not afraid of the crystals 
making you ashamed of yourselves, we will 
try to get some notion of, to-morrow. But it 
will be a bye-lecture, and more about your- 
selves than the minerals. Don't come unless 
you like. 

Mary. I'm sure the crystals will make us 
ashamed of ourselves; but we'll come, for all 
that. 

L. Meantime, look well and quietly over 
these needle, or thread crystals, and those on 
the other two tables, with magnifying glasses; 
and see what thoughts will come into your 
little heads about them. For the best thoughts 
are generally those which come without being 
forced, one does not know how. And so I 
hope you will get through your wet day 
patiently. 



LECTURE V. 
CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 



6 Ethics 81 



LECTURE V. 

CRYSTAL VIRTUES. 

A quiet talk, in the afternoon, by the sunniest 
window of the Drawing-room. Present, 
Florrie, Isabel, May, Lucilla, Kathleen, 
Dora, Mary, and some others, who have 
saved time for the bye- Lecture. 

L. So you have really come, like good 
girls, to be made ashamed of yourselves? 

Dora (very meekly). No, we needn't be 
made so ; we always are. 

L. Well, I believe that's truer than most 
pretty speeches ; but you know, you saucy girl, 
some people have more reason to be so than 
others. Are you sure everybody is, as well 
as you? The General Voice. Yes, yes; 
everybody. 

L. What! Florrie ashamed of herself? 

(Florrie hides behind the curtain.) 

L. And Isabel? 

(Isabel hides under the table.) 

L. And May? 

(May runs into the corner behind the piano.) 

L. And Lucilla? 

(Lucilla hides her face in her hands.) 

L. Dear, dear; but this will never do. I 
shall have to tell you of the faults of the crys- 

83 



84 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

tals, instead of virtues, to put you in heart 
again. 

May (coming out of her corner). Oh! have 
the crystals faults, like us? 

L. Certainly, May. Their best virtues are 
shown in fighting their faults; and some have 
a great many faults; and some are very 
naughty crystals, indeed. 

Florrie (from behind her curtain). As 
naughty as me? 

Isabel (peeping out from under the table- 
cloth). Or me? 

L. Well, I don't know. They never forget 
their syntax, children, when once they've been 
taught it. But I think some of them are, on 
the whole, worse than any of you. Not that 
it's amiable of you to look so radiant, all in a 
minute, on that account. 

Dora. Oh! but it's so much more com- 
fortable. 

(Everybody seems to recover their spirits. 
Eclipse of Florrie and Isabel terminates.) 

L. What kindly creatures girls are, after 
all, to their neighbors' failings! I think you 
may be ashamed of yourselves, indeed, now, 
children! I can tell you, you shall hear of the 
highest crystalline merits that I can think of, 
to-day: and I wish there were more of them; 
but crystals have a limited, though a stern, 
code of morals; and their essential virtues are 
but two: — the first is to be pure, and the second 
to be well shaped. 

Mary. Pure ! Does that mean clear — tran- 
sparent? 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 85 

L. No; unless in the case of a transparent 
substance. You cannot have a transparent 
crystal of gold ; but you may have a perfectly 
pure one. 

Isabel. But you said it was the shape that 
made things be crystals; therefore, oughtn't 
their shape to be their first virtue, not their 
second? 

L. Right, you troublesome mousie. But I 
call their shape only their second virtue, 
because it depends on time and accident, and 
things which the crystal cannot help. If it is 
cooled too quickly, or shaken, it must take 
what shape it can ; but it seems as if, even 
then, it had in itself the power of rejecting im- 
purity, if it has crystalline life enough. Here 
is a crystal of quartz, well enough shaped in 
its way; but it seems to have been languid and 
sick at heart; and SQ3m3 white milky substance 
has got into it, and mixed itself up with it, all 
through. It makes the quartz, quite yellow, 
if you hold it up to the light, and milky blue 
on the surface. Here is another, broken into 
a thousand separate facets and out of all trace- 
able shape ; but as pure as a mountain spring. 
I like this one best. 

The Audience. So do I — and I — and I. 

Mary. Would a crystallographer? 

L. I think so. He would find many more 
laws curiously exemplified in the irregularly 
ground but pure crystal. But it is a futile 
question, this of first or second. Purity is in 
most cases a prior, if not a nobler, virtue; at 



86 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

all events, it is most convenient to think about 
it first. 

Mary. But what ought we to think about 
it? Is there much to be thought — I mean, 
much to puzzle one? 

L. I don't know what you call "much. " 
It is a long time since I met with anything in 
which there was little. There's not much in 
this, perhaps. The crystal must be either 
dirty or clean, — and there's an end. So it is 
with one's hands, and with one's heart — only 
you can wash your hands without changing 
them, but not hearts, nor crystals. On the 
whole, while you are young, it will be as well 
to take care that 3 T our hearts don't want much 
washing ; for they may perhaps need wringing 
also, when they do. 

(Audience doubtful and uncomfortable. 
Lucilla at last takes courage.) 

Lucilla. Oh! but surely sir, we cannot 
make our hearts clean? 

L. Not easily, Lucilla; so you had better 
keep them so, when they are. 

Lucilla. When they are! But, sir — 

L. Well? 

Lucilla. Sir — surely — are we not told that 
they are all evil? 

L. Wait a little, Lucilla; that is difficult 
ground you are getting upon and we must 
keep to our crystals, till at least we under- 
stand what their good and evil consist in; they 
may help us afterwards to some useful hints 
about our own. I said that their goodness con-, 
sisted chiefly in purity of substance, and per- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 87 

fectness of form: but those are rather the 
effects of their goodness, than the goodness 
itself. The inherent virtues of the crystals, 
resulting in these outer conditions, might 
really seem to be best described in the 
words we should use respecting living crea- 
tures — " force of heart" and '* steadiness of pur- 
pose. " There seem to be in some crystals, 
from the beginning, an unconquerable purity 
of vital power, and strength of crystal spirit. 
Whatever dead substance, unacceptant of this 
energy, comes in their way, is either rejected, 
or forced to take some beautiful subordinate 
form ; the purity of the crystal remains unsul- 
lied, and every atom of it bright with coherent 
energy. Then the second condition is, that 
from the beginning of its whole structure, a 
fine crystal seems to have determined that it 
will be of a certain size and of a certain shape ; 
it persists in this plan, and completes it. Here 
is a perfect crystal of quartz for you. It is 
of an unusual form, and one which it might 
seem very difficult to build a pyramid with con- 
vex sides, composed of other minor pyramids. 
But there is not a flaw in its contour through- 
out; not one of its myriads of component sides 
but is as bright as a jeweler's faceted work 
(and far finer, if you saw it close). The crys- 
tal points are as sharp as javelins; their edges 
will cut glass with a touch. Anything more 
resolute, consummate, determinate in form, 
cannot be conceived. Here, on the other 
hand, is a crystal of the same substance, in a 
perfectly simple type of form — a plain six- 



88 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

sided prism; but from its base to its point,- — 
and it is nine inches long, — it has never for one 
instant made up its mind what thickness it 
will have. It seems to have begun by making 
itself as thick as it thought possible with the 
quantity of material at command. Still not 
being as thick as it would like to be, it has 
clumsily glued on more substance at one of its 
sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a panic 
of economy; then puffed itself out again; then 
starved one side to enlarge another; then 
warped itself quite out of its first line. 
Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, 
distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite 
human image of decrepitude and dishonor; but 
the worst of all the signs of its decay and help- 
lessness, is that, half-way up, a parasite crystal, 
smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in 
the side of the larger one, eating out a cavity 
round its root, and then growing backward, 
or downward, contrary to the direction of the 
main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least 
difference in purity of substance between the 
first most noble stone, and this ignoble and 
dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in 
its will, or want of will. 

Mary. Oh, if we could but understand the 
meaning of it all ! 

L. We can understand all that is good for 
us. It is just as true for us, as for the crystal, 
that the nobleness of life depends on its con- 
sistency, — clearness of purpose, — quiet and 
ceaseless energy. All doubt, and repenting, 
and botching, and re-touching, and wondering 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 89 

what will it be best to do next, are vice, as 
well as misery. 

Mary (much wondering). But must not one 
repent when one does wrong - , and hesitate 
when one can't see one's way? 

L. You have no business at all to do wrong ; 
nor to get into any way that you cannot see. 
Your intelligence should always be far in 
advance of your act. Whenever you do not 
know what you are about, you are sure to be 
doing wrong. 

Kathleen. Oh, dear, but I never know 
what I am about! 

L. Very true, Katie, but it is a great deal 
to know, if you know that. And you find that 
you have done wrong afterward; and perhaps 
some day you may begin to know, or at least, 
think, what you are about. 

Isabel. But surely people can't do very 
wrong if they don't know, can they? I mean, 
they can't be very naughty. They can be 
wrong, like Kathleen or me, when we make 
mistakes ; but not wrong in the dreadful way. 
I can't express what I mean; but there are two 
sorts of wrong, are there not? 

L. Yes, Isabel; but you will find that the 
great difference is between kind and unkind 
wrongs, not between meant and unmeant 
wrong. Very few people really mean to do 
wrong, — in a deep sense, none. They only 
don't know what they are about. Cain did not 
mean to do wrong when he killed Abel. 

(Isabel draws a deep breath, and opens her 
eyes very wide.) 



90 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. No, Isabel; and there are countless 
Cains among us now, who kill their brothers 
by the score a day, not only for less provoca- 
tion than Cain had, but for no provocation, — 
and merely for what they can make of their 
bones, — yet do not think they are doing wrong 
in the least. Then sometimes you have the 
business reversed, as over in ximerica these 
last years, where you have seen Abel resolutely 
killing Cain, and not thinking he is doing 
wrong. The great difficulty is always to open 
people's eyes: to touch their feelings, and 
break their hearts, is easy; the difficult thing 
is to break their heads. What does it matter, 
as long as they remain stupid, whether you 
change their feelings or not? You cannot be 
always at their elbow to tell them what is 
right: and they may just do as wrong as before, 
or worse; and their best intentions merely 
make the road smooth for them, — you know 
where, children. For it is not the place itself 
that is paved with them, as people say so often. 
You can't pave the bottomless pit; but you 
may the road to it. 

May. Well, but if people do as well as they 
can see how, surely that is the right for them, 
isn't it? 

L. No, May, not a bit of it; right is right, 
and wrong is wrong. It is only the fool who 
does wrong, and says he "did it for the best." 
And if there's one sort of person in the world 
that the Bible speaks harder of than another, 
it is fools. Their particular and chief way of 
saying "There is no God" is this, of declaring 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 91 

that whatever their "public opinion'* may be, 
is right: r __"_ chat God's opinion is of no conse- 
quence. 

May. But surely nobody can always know 
what is right? 

L. Yes, you always can, for to-day; and if 
you do what you see of it to-day, you will see 
more of it, and more clearly, to-morrow. Here 
for instance, you children are at school, and 
have to learn French, and arithmetic, and 
music, and several other such things. That is 
your "right" for the present; the "right" 
for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn 
as much as you can without spoiling your 
dinner, yoar sleep, or your play; and that what 
you do learn, you learn well. You all know 
when you learn with a will, and when you 
dawdle. There's no doubt of conscience about 
that, I suppose? 

Violet. No; but if one wants to read an 
amusing book, instead of learning one's les- 
son? 

L. You don't call that a "question," seri- 
ously, Violet? You are then merely deciding 
whether you will resolutely do wrong or not. 

Mary. But in after life, how many fearful 
difficulties may arise, however one tries to 
know or to do what is right! 

L. You are much too sensible a girl, Mary, 
to have felt that, whatever you may have seen. 
A great many of young ladies' difficulties arise 
from their falling in love with a wrong person ; 
but they have no business to let themselves 
fall in love, till they know he is the right one. 



92 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Dora. How many thousands ought he to 
have a year? 

L. (disdaining reply). There are, of 
course, certain crises of fortune when one has 
to take care of oneself, and mind shrewdly 
what one is about. There is never any real 
doubt about the path, but you may have to 
walk very slowly. 

Mary. And if one is forced to do a wrong 
thing by some one who has authority over 
you? 

L. My dear, no one can be forced to do a 
wrong thing, for the guilt is in the will: but 
you may any day be forced to do a fatal thing, 
as you might be forced to take poison ; the 
remarkable law of nature in such cases being, 
that it is always unfortunate you who are pois- 
oned, and not the person who gives you the 
dose. It is a very strange law, but it is a law. 
Nature merely sees to the carrying out of the 
normal operation of arsenic. She never 
troubles herself to ask who gave it you. So 
also you may be starved to death, morally as 
well as physically, by other people's faults. 
You are, on the whole, very good children sit- 
ting here to-day; do you think that your good- 
ness comes all by your own contriving? or that 
you are gentle and kind because your disposi- 
tions are naturally more angelic than those of 
the poor girls who are playing, with wild eyes, 
on the dust-heaps in the alleys of our great 
towns; and who will one day fill their prisons, 
— or, better, their graves? Heaven only 
knows where they, and we who have cast 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 93 

them there, shall stand at last. But the main 
judgment question will be, I suppose, for all 
of us, "Did you keep a good heart through it?" 
What you were, others may answer for; — what 
you tried to be, you must answer for yourself. 
Was the heart pure and true — tell us that? 

And so we come back to your sorrowful ques- 
tion, Lucilla, which I put aside a little ago. 
You would be afraid to answer that your heart 
was pure and true, would not you? 

Lucilla. Yes, indeed, sir. 

L. Because you have been taught that it is 
all evil — "only evil continually." Somehow, 
often as people say that, they never seem, to 
me, to believe it. Do you really believe it? 

Lucilla. Yes, sir; I hope so. 

L. That you have an entirely bad heart? 

Lucilla (a little uncomfortable at the substi- 
tution of the monosyllable for the dissyllable, 
nevertheless persisting in her orthodoxy). 
Yes, sir. 

L. Florrie, I am sure you are tired; I never 
like you to stay when you are tired ; but, you 
know, you must not play with the kitten while 
we're talking. 

Florrie. Oh! but I'm not tired; and I'm 
only nursing her. She'll be asleep in my lap, 
directly. 

L. Stop! that puts me in mind of some- 
thing I had to show you, about minerals that 
are like hair. I want a hair out of Tittie's 
tail. 

Florrie (quite rude, in her surprise, even 



94 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

to the point of repeating expressions). Out 
of Tittie's tail! 

L. Yes : a brown one : Lucilla, you can get 
at the tip of it nicely, under Florrie's arm; 
just pull one out for me. 

Lucilla. Oh! but, sir, it will hurt her so! 

L. Never mind; she can't scratch you while 
Florrie is holding her. Now that I think of it, 
you had better pull out two. 

Lucilla. But then she may scratch Florrie! 
and it will hurt her so, sir! if you only want 
brown hairs, wouldn't two of mine do? 

L. Would you really rather pull out your 
own than Tittie's? 

Lucilla. Oh, of course, if mine will do. 

L. But that's very wicked, Lucilla! 

Lucilla. Wicked, sir? 

L. Yes; if your heart was not so bad, you 
would much rather pull all the cat's hairs out 
than one of your own. 

Lucilla. Oh! but, sir, I didn't mean bad 
like that. 

L. I believe, if the truth were told, Lucilla, 
you would like to tie a kettle to Tittie's tail, 
and hunt her round the playground. 

Lucilla. Indeed, I should not, sir. 

L. That's not true, Lucilla; you know it 
cannot be. 

Lucilla. Sir? 

L. Certainly it is not ; — how can you possi- 
bly speak any truth out of such a heart as you 
have? It is wholly deceitful. 

Lucilla. Oh! no, no; I don't mean that 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 95 

way; I don't mean that it makes me tell lies, 
quite out. 

L. Only that it tells lies within you? 

Lucilla. Yes. 

L. Then, outside of it, you know what is 
true, and say so ; and I may trust the outside 
of your heart; but within, it is all foul and 
false. Is that the way? 

Lucilla. I suppose so: I don't understand 
it quite. 

L. There is no occasion for understanding 
it; but do you feel it? Are you sure that your 
heart is deceitful above all things, and desper- 
ately wicked? 

Lucilla (much relieved by finding herself 
among phrases with which she is acquainted). 
Yes, sir. I'm sure of that. 

L. (pensively). I'm sorry for it, Lucilla. 

Lucilla. So am I, indeed. 

L. What are you sorry with, Lucilla? 

Lucilla. Sorry with, sir? 

L. Yes; I mean, where do you feel sorry, 
in your feet? 

Lucilla (laughing a little). No, sir, of 
course. 

L. In your shoulders, then? 

Lucilla. No, sir. 

L. You are sure of that? Because, I fear, 
sorrow in the shoulders would not be worth 
much. 

Lucilla. I suppose I feel it in my heart, if 
I really am sorry. 

L. If you really are ! Do you mean to say 



96 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

that you are sure you are utterly wicked, and 
yet you do not care? 

Lucilla. No, indeed ; I have cried about it 
often. 

L. Well, then, you are sorry in your heart? 

Lucilla. Yes, when the sorrow is worth 
anything. 

L. Even if it be not, it cannot be anywhere 
else but there. It is not the crystalline lens 
of your eyes which is sorry, when you cry? 

Lucilla. No, sir, of course. 

L. Then, have you two hearts ; one of which 
is wicked, and the other grieved? or is one side 
of it sorry for the other side? 

Lucilla (weary of cross-examination, and a 
little vexed). Indeed, sir, you know I can't 
understand it; but you know how it is writ- 
ten— " another law in my members, warring 
against the law of my mind." 

L. Yes, Lucilla, I know how it is written; 
but I do not see that it will help us to know 
that, if we neither understand what is written, 
nor feel it. And you will not get nearer to 
the meaning of one verse, if, as soon as you are 
puzzled by it, you escape to another, introduc- 
ing three new words — "law, " "members, " and 
"mind;" not one of which you at present 
know the meaning of; and respecting which, 
you probably never will be much wiser; since 
men like Montesquieu and Locke have spent 
great part of their lives in endeavoring to ex- 
plain two of them. 

Lucilla. Oh ! please, sir, ask somebody else. 

L. If I thought any one else could answer 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 97 

better than you, Lucilla, I would: but suppose 
I try, instead, myself, to explain your feel- 
ing's to you? 

Lucilla. Oh, yes; please do. 

L. Mind I say your "feelings," not your 
"belief." For I cannot undertake to explain 
anybody's beliefs. Still I must try a little 
first, to explain the belief also, because I want 
to draw it to some issue. As far as I under- 
stand what you say, or any one else, taught as 
you have been taught, says, on this matter, — 
you think that there is an external goodness, a 
whited-sepulcher kind of goodness, which 
appears beautiful outwardly, but is within full 
of uncleanness: a deep secret guilt, of which 
we ourselves are not sensible; and which can 
only be seen by the Maker of us all. (Approv- 
ing murmurs from audience.) 

L. Is it not so with the body as well as the 
soul? 

(Looked notes of interrogation.) 

L. A skull, for instance, is not a beautiful 
thing? 

(Grave faces, signifying "Certainly not," 
and "What next?") 

L. And if you all could see in each other 
with clear eyes, whatever God sees beneath 
those fair faces of yours, you would not like it? 

(Murmured No's.) 

L. Nor would it be good for you? 

(Silence.) 

L. The probability being that what God 
does not allow you to see, He does not wish 
you to see; nor even to think of? 

7 Ethics 



98 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

(Silence prolonged.) 

L. It would not at all be good for you, for 
instance, whenever you were washing your 
faces, and braiding your hair, to be thinking 
of the shapes of the jawbones, and*of the car- 
tilage of the nose, and of the jagged sutures 
of the scalp? 

(Resolutely whispered No's.) 

L. Still less to see through a clear glass 
the daily process of nourishment and decay? . 

(No's.) 

L. Still less if instead of merely inferior 
and preparatory conditions of structure, as in 
the skeleton, — or inferior offices of structure, 
as in operation of life and death, — there were 
actual diseases in the body; ghastly and 
dreadful. You would try to cure it ; but hav- 
ing taken such measures as were necessary, 
you would not think the cure likely to be pro- 
moted by perpetually watching the wounds, 
or thinking of them. On the contrary, you 
would be thankful for every moment of forget- 
fulness; as, in daily health, you must be thank- 
ful that your Maker has veiled whatever is 
fearful in your frame under a sweet and 
manifest beauty; and has made it your duty, 
and your only safety, to rejoice in that, both 
in yourself and in others: — not indeed con- 
cealing, or refusing to believe in sickness, if it 
come ; but never dwelling on it. 

Now, your wisdom and duty touching soul- 
sickness are just the same. Ascertain clearly 
what is wrong with you ; and so far as you 
know any means of mending it, take those 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 99 

means, and have done ; when you are examin- 
ing yourself, never call yourself merely a 
4 'sinner," that is very cheap abuse; and 
utterly useless. You may even get to like it, 
and be proud of it. But call yourself a liar, a 
coward, a sluggard, a glutton, or any evil- 
eyed, jealous wretch, if you indeed find your- 
self to be in any wise any of these. Take 
steady means to check yourself in whatever 
fault you have ascertained, and justly accused 
yourself of. And as soon as you are in active 
way of mending, you will be no more inclined 
to moan over an undefined corruption. For the 
rest, you will find it less easy to uproot faults, 
than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do 
not think of your faults; still less of others' 
faults : in every person who comes near you, 
look for what is good and strong : honor that ; 
rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it; 
and your faults will drop off like dead leaves, 
when their time comes. If, on looking back, 
your whole life should seem rugged as a palm- 
tree stem ; still, never mind, so long as it had 
been growing; and has its grand green shade 
of leaves, and weight of honeyed fruit at top. 
And even if you cannot find much good in 
yourself at last, think that it does not much 
matter to the universe either what you were, 
or are; think how many people are noble, if 
you cannot be ; and rejoice in their nobleness. 
An immense quantity of modern confession of 
sin, even when honest, is merely a sickly 
egotism ; which will rather gloat over its own 

LtfC 



100 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

evil, than lose the centralization of its interests 
in itself. 

Mary. But then, if we ought to forget our- 
selves so much, how did the old Greek prov- 
erb "Know thyself' ' come to be so highly 
esteemed? 

L. My dear, it is the proverb of proverbs ; 
Apollo's proverb, and the sun's — but do you 
think you can know yourself by looking into 
yourself? Never. You can know what you 
are only by looking out of yourself. Measure 
your own powers with those of others ; com- 
pare your own interests with those of others; 
try to understand what you appear to them, as 
well as what they appear to you; and judge of 
yourselves, in all things, relatively and subor- 
dinate^ ; not positively : starting always with 
a wholesome conviction of the probability that 
there is nothing particular about you. For in- 
stance, some of you perhaps think you can 
write poetry. Dwell on your own feelings; 
and goings: — and you will soon think your- 
selves Tenth Muses; but forget your own feel- 
ings; and try, instead, to understand a line or 
two of Chaucer or Dante : and you will soon 
begin to feel yourselves very foolish girls — 
which is much like the fact. 

So, something which befalls you may seem 
a great misfortune; — you meditate over its 
effects on you personally ; and begin to think 
that it is a chastisement, or a warning, or a 
this or that or the other of profound signifi- 
cance ; and that all the angels in heaven have 
left their business for a little while, that they 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 101 

may watch its effects on your mind. But give 
up this egotistic indulgence of your fancy ; ex- 
amine a little what misfortunes, greater a 
thousand fold, are happening every second, to 
twenty times worthier persons: and your self- 
consciousness will change into pity and humil- 
ity ; and you will know yourself, so far as to 
understand that "there hath nothing taken 
thee but what is common to man/' 

Now, Lucilla, these are the practical conclu- 
sions which any person of sense would arrive 
at, supposing the texts which relate to the in- 
ner evil of the heart were as many, and as 
prominent, as they are often supposed to be 
by careless readers. But the way in which 
common people read their Bibles is just like 
the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs 
ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was 
said), over and over, where the grapes lay on 
the ground. What fruit stuck to their spines, 
they carried off, and ate. So your hedge- 
hoggy readers roll themselves over and over 
their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks 
to their own spines is Scripture, and that 
nothing else is. But you can only get the 
skins of the texts that way. If you want their 
juice, you must press them in cluster. Now, 
the clustered texts about the human heart, 
insist, as a body, not on any inherent corrup- 
tion in all hearts, but on the terrific distinction 
between the bad and the good ones. "A good 
man, out of the good treasure of his heart 
bringeth forth that which is good ; and an evil 
man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth 



102 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

that which is evil." " They on the rock are 
they which, in an honest and good heart, 
having heard the word, keep it." " Delight 
thyself in the Lord, and he will give thee the 
desires of thine heart. ' ' ' ' The wicked have bent 
their bow, that they may privily shoot at him 
that is upright in heart." And so on; they 
are countless, to the same effect. And, for all 
of us, the question is not at all to ascertain 
how much or how little corruption there is in 
human nature; but to ascertain whether, out 
of all the mass of that nature, we are of the 
sheep or the goat breed; whether we are 
people of upright heart, being shot at, or 
people of crooked heart, shooting. And, of 
all the texts bearing on the subject, this, 
which is a quite simple and practical order, is 
the one you have chiefly to hold in mind. 
"Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of 
it are the issues of life." 

Lucilla. And yet, how inconsistent the 
texts seem ! 

L. Nonsense, Lucilla! do you think the 
universe is bound to look consistent to a girl 
of fifteen? Look up at your own room win- 
dow; — you can just see it from where you sit. 
I'm glad that it is left open, as it ought to 
be, in so fine a day. But do you see what a 
black spot it looks, in the sun-lighted wall? 

Lucilla. Yes, it looks as black as ink. 

L. Yet you know it is a very bright room 
when you are inside of it; quite as bright as 
there is any occasion for it to be, that its little 
lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 103 

probable, also, that if you could look into your 
heart from the sun's point of view, it might 
appear a very black hole indeed: nay, the sun 
may sometimes think good to tell you that it 
looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and 
make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if 
you don't put the shutters up. And the one 
question for you, remember, is not "dark or 
light?" but " tidy or untidy?" Look well to 
your sweeping and garnishing ; and be sure it 
is only the banished spirit, or some of the seven 
wickeder ones at his back, who will still 
whisper to you that it is all black. 



LECTURE VI. 
CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 



105 



LECTURE VI. 

CRYSTAL QUARRELS. 

Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has 
been a game of crystallization in the morn- 
ing, of which various account has to be ren- 
dered. In particular, everybody has to ex- 
plain why they were always where they 
were not intended to be. 

L. (having received and considered the re- 
ported). You have got on pretty well, chil- 
dren: but you know these were easy figures 
you have been trying. Wait till I have drawn 
you out the plans of some crystals of snow ! 

Mary. I don't think those will be the most 
difficult : — they are so beautiful that we shall 
remember our places better; and then they 
are all regular, and in stars : it is those twisty 
oblique ones we are afraid of. 

L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of 
Leuthen, and learn Friedrich's "oblique 
order." You will "get it done for once, I 
think, provided you can march as a pair of 
compasses would. " But remember, when you 
can construct the most difficult single figures, 
you have only learned half the game — nothing 
so much as the half, indeed, as the crystals 
themselves play it. 

Mary. Indeed; what else is there? 
107 



108 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. It is seldom that any mineral crystal- 
lizes alone. Usually two or three, under 
quite different crystalline laws, form together. 
They do this absolutely without flaw or fault, 
when they are in fine temper: and observe 
what it signifies. It signifies that the two, or 
more, minerals of different natures agree, 
somehow between themselves, how much space 
each will want ; — agree which of them shall 
give way to the other at their junction; or in 
what measure each will accommodate itself to 
the other's shape! And then each takes its 
permitted shape, and alloted share of space; 
yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds till 
each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and 
gracefully to its differently-natured neighbor. 
So that, in order to practice this, in even the 
simplest terms, you must divide into two par- 
ties, wearing different colors; each must choose 
a different figure to construct ; and you must 
form one of these figures through the other, 
both going on at the same time. 

Mary. I think we may perhaps manage it; 
but I cannot at all understand how the crystals 
do. It seems to imply so much preconcerting 
of plan, and so much giving way to each 
other, as if they really were living. 

L. Yes, it implies both the concurrence 
and compromise, regulating all willfulness of 
design: and, more curious still, the crystals 
do not always give way to each other. They 
show exactly the same varieties of temper that 
human creatures might. Sometimes they 
yield the required place with perfect grace and 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 109 

courtesy; forming fantastic, but exquisitely 
finished groups: and sometimes they will not 
yield at all ; but fight furiously for their places, 
losing all shape and honor, and even their own 
likeness, in the contest. 

Mary. But is not that wholly wonderful? 
How is it that one never sees it spoken of in 
books? 

L. The scientific men are all busy in deter- 
mining the constant laws under which the 
struggle takes place ; these indefinite humors 
of the elements are of no interest to them. 
And unscientific people rarely give themselves 
the trouble of thinking at all, when they look 
at stones. Not that it is of much use to think; 
the more one thinks, the more one is puzzled. 

Mary. Surely it is more wonderful than 
anything in botany? 

L. Everything has its own wonders; but, 
given the nature of the plant, it is easier to 
understand what a flower will do, and why it 
does it, than, given anything we as yet know 
of stone-nature, to understand what a crystal 
will do, and why it does it. You at once ad- 
mit a kind of volition and choice, in the flower; 
but we are not accustomed to attribute any- 
thing of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, 
in reality, more likeness to some conditions of 
human feeling among stones than among 
plants. There is a far greater difference be- 
tween kindty-tempered and ill-tempered crys- 
tals of the same mineral, than between any 
two specimens of the same flower: and the 
friendships and wars of crystals depend more 



110 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

definitely and curiously on their varieties of 
disposition, than any associations of flowers. 

Here, for instance, is a good garnet, living 
with good mica: one rich red, and the other 
silver white; the mica leaves exactly room 
enough for the garnet to crystallize comfortably 
in ; and the garnet lives happily in its little 
white house ; fitted to it, like a pholas in its 
cell. But here are wicked garnet living with 
wicked mica. See what ruin they make of each 
other! You cannot tell which is which; the 
garnets look like dull red stains on the crum- 
bling stones. By the way, I never could un- 
derstand, if St. Gothard is a real saint, why he 
can't keep his garnets in better order. These 
are all under his care ; but I suppose there are 
too many of them for him to look after. The 
streets of Airolo are paved with them. 

May. Paved with garnets? 

L. With mica-slate and garnets; I broke 
this bit out of a paving stone. Now garnets 
and mica are natural friends, and generally 
fond of each other; but you see how they 
quarrel when they are ill brought up. So it 
is always. Good crystals are friendly with 
almost all other good crystals, however little 
they chance to see of each other, or however 
opposite their habits may be; while wicked 
crystals quarrel with one another, though they 
may be exactly alike in habits, and see each 
other continually. And of course the wicked 
crystals quarrel with the good ones. 

Isabel. Then do the good ones get angry? 

L. No, never; thev attend to their own 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. Ill 

work and life ; and live it as well as they can, 
though they are always the sufferers. Here, 
for instance, is a rock crystal of the purest race 
and finest temper, who was born, unhappily 
for him, in a bad neighborhood, near Beaufort 
in Savoy; and he has had to fight with vile 
calcareous mud all his life. See here, when 
he was but a child, it came down on him, and 
nearly buried him; a weaker crystal would 
have died in despair; but he only gathered 
himself together, like Hercules against the 
serpents, and threw a layer of crystal over the 
clay; conquered it, — imprisoned it, — and lived 
on. Then, when he was a little older, came 
more clay; and poured itself upon him here, at 
the side ; and he has laid crystal over that, and 
lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came 
on at his angles, and tried to cover them, and 
round them away; but upon that he threw out 
buttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to 
his own central line as chapels round a cathe- 
dral apse; and clustered them round the clay; 
and conquered it again. At last the clay came 
on at his summit, and tried to blunt his sum- 
mit; but he could not endure that for an 
instant; and left his flanks all rough, but 
pure; and fought the clay at his crest, and 
built crest over crest and peak over peak, till 
the clay surrendered at last, and here is his 
summit, smooth and pure, terminating a 
pyramid of alternate clay and crystal, half a 
foot high ! 

Lily. Oh, how nice of him ! What a dear, 



112 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

brave crystal! But I can't bear to see his 
flanks all broken, and the clay within them. 

L. Yes; it was an evil chance for him, the 
being born to such contention ; there are some 
enemies so base that even to hold them captive 
is a kind of dishonor. But look, here has been 
quite a different kind of struggle : the adverse 
power has been more orderly, and has fought 
the pure crystal in ranks as firm as its own. 
This is not mere rage and impediment of 
crowded evil : here is a disciplied hostility ; 
army against army. 

Lily. Oh, but this is much more beautiful ! 

L. Yes, for both the elements have true 
virtue in them ; it is a pity they are at war, 
but they war grandly. 

Mary. But is this the same clay as in the 
other crystal. 

L. I used the word clay for shortness. In 
both, the enemy is really limestone; but in the 
first, disordered, and mixed with true clay; 
while, here, it is nearly pure and crystallizes 
into its own primitive form, the oblique six- 
sided one, which you know ; and out of these it 
makes regiments; and then squares of the 
regiments, and so charges the rock crystal, 
literally in square against column. 

Isabel. Please, please, let me see. And 
what does the rock crystal do? 

L. The rock crystal seems able to do noth- 
ing. The calcite cuts it through at every 
charge. Look here, — and here ! The loveliest 
crystal in the whole group is hewn fairly into 
two pieces. 




' You're to tell us what you promised. 

The Ethics of the Dust. 



-Page 127, 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 113 

Isabel. Oh, dear; but is the calcite harder 
than the crystal then? 

L. No, softer Very much softer. 

Mary. But then, how can it possibly cut 
the crystal? 

L. It did not really cut it, though it passes 
through it. The two were formed together, 
as I told you ; but no one knows how. Still, it 
is strange that this hard quartz has in all cases 
a good-natured way with it, of yielding to 
everything else. All sorts of soft things make 
nests for themselves in it; and it never makes 
a nest for itself in anything. It has all the 
rough outside work ; and every sort of coward- 
ly and weak mineral can shelter itself within 
it. Look ; these are hexagonal plates of mica ; 
if they were outside of this crystal they would 
break, like burnt paper; but they are inside of 
it, — nothing can hurt them, — the crystal has 
taken them into its very heart, keeping all 
their delicate edges as sharp as if they were 
under water, instead of bathed in rock. Here 
is a piece of branched silver : you can bend it 
with a touch of your finger, but the stamp of 
its every fiber is on the rock in which it lay, 
as if the quartz had been as soft as wool. 

Lily. Oh, the good, good quartz. But does 
it never get inside of anything? 

L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I 
may perhaps answer, without being laughed 
at, that it gets inside of itself sometimes. But 
I don't remember seeing quartz make a nest 
for itself in anything else. 

Isabel. Please, there was something I heard 

8 Ethics 



114 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

you talking about, last time, with Miss Mary. 
I was at my lessons, but I heard something 
about nests; and I thought it was birds' nests; 
and I couldn't help listening; and then, I 
remember, it was about " nests of quartz in 
granite." I remember, because I was so dis- 
appointed! 

L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite 
rightly; but I can't tell you about those nests 
to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow; but there's no 
contradiction between my saying then, and 
now ; I will show you that there is not, some 
day. Will you trust me meanwhile? 

Isabel. Won't I! 

L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of 
courtesy in quartz ; it is on a small scale, but 
wonderfully pretty. Here is nobly born 
quartz living with a green mineral, called epi- 
dote; and they are immense friends. Now, 
you see, a comparatively large and strong 
quartz-crystal, and a very weak and slender 
little one of epidote, have begun to grow, close 
by each other, and sloping unluckily towards 
each other, so that at last they meet. They 
cannot go on growing together; the quartz- 
crystal is five times as thick, and more than 
twenty times as strong,* as the epidote ; but he 
stops at once, just in the very crowning mo- 
ment of his life, when he is building his own 
summit ! He lets the pale little film of epidote 



*Quartz is not much harder than epidote ; the strength 
is only supposed to be in some proportion to the squares 
of the diameters. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 115 

grow right past him ; stopping his own summit 
for it; and he never himself grows any more. 

Lily (after some silence of wonder). But is 
the quartz never wicked then? 

L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems 
good-natured, compared to other things. 
Here are two very characteristic examples; 
one is good quartz, living with good pearl- 
spar, and the other, wicked quartz, living with 
wicked pearl-spar. In both, the quartz yields 
to the soft carbonate of iron ; but, in the first 
place, the iron takes only what it needs of 
room ; and is inserted into the planes of the 
rock crystal with such precision that you must 
break it away before you can tell whether it 
really penetrates the quartz or not; while the 
crystals of iron are perfectly formed, and have 
a lovely bloom on their surface besides. But, 
here, when the two minerals quarrel, the un- 
happy quartz has all its surface jagged and 
torn to pieces, and there is not a single iron 
crystal whose shape you can completely trace. 
But the quartz has the worst of it, in both 
instances. 

Violet. Might we look at that piece of 
broken quartz again, with the weak little film 
across it? it seems such a strange, lovely thing, 
like the self-sacrifice of a human being. 

L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is 
not a lovely thing, Violet. It is often a neces- 
sary and noble thing; but no form nor degree 
of suicide can be ever lovely. 

Violet. But self-sacrifice is not suicide! 

L. What is it, then? 



116 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Violet. Giving up one's self for another. 

L. Well ; and what do you mean by "giving 
up one's self? 

Violet. Giving up one's tastes, one's feel- 
ings, one's time, one's happiness, and so on, 
to make others happy. 

L. I hope you will never marry anybody, 
Violet, who expects you to make him happy 
in that way. 

Violet (hesitating). In what way? 

L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing 
your feelings and happiness. 

Violet. No, no, I don't mean that; but you 
know, for other people, one must. 

L. For people who don't love you, and 
whom you know nothing about? Be it so; but 
how does this "giving up" differ from suicide 
then? 

Violet. Why, giving up one's pleasures is 
not killing one's self? 

L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; nei- 
ther is it self-sacrifice, but self-culture. But 
giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender 
the pleasure of walking, your foot will wither: 
you may as well cut it off; if you surrender 
the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be 
unable to bear the light; you may as well pluck 
them out. And to maim yourself is partly to 
kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you 
will soon slay. 

Violet. But why do you make me think of 
that verse, then, about the foot and the 
eye? 

L. You are indeed commanded to cut off 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 117 

and to pluck out, if foot or eye offend you ; but 
why should they offend you? 

Violet. I don't know; I never quite under- 
stood that. 

L. Yet it is a sharp order; one needing to 
be well understood if it is to be well obeyed! 
When Helen sprained her ankle the other day 
you saw how strongly it had to be bandaged ; 
that is to say, prevented from all work, to 
recover it. But the bandage was not "lovely. " 

Violet. No, indeed. 

L. And if her foot had been crushed, or 
diseased, or snake-bitten, instead of sprained, 
it might have been needful to cut it off. But 
the amputation would not have been "lovely." 

Violet. No. 

L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already 
and betray you, — if the light that is in you be 
darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or 
are taken in the snare, — it is, indeed, time to 
pluck out, and cut off, I think ; but, so crippled, 
you can never be what you might have been 
otherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt 
or maimed ; and the sacrifice is not beautiful, 
though necessary. 

Violet (after a pause). But when one sacri- 
fices one's self for others? 

L. Why not rather others for you? 

Violet. Oh! but I couldn't bear that. 

L. Then why should they bear it? 

Dora (bursting in indignant). And Ther- 
mopylae, and Protesilaus, and Marcus Curtius, 
and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia and 
Jephthah's daughter? 



118 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. (sustaining the indignation unmoved). 
And the Samaritan woman's son? 

Dora. Which Samaritan woman's? 

L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29. 

Dora. (obeys). How horrid! As if we 
meant anything like that! 

L. You don't seem to me to know in the 
least what you do mean, children. What 
practical difference is there between "that," 
and what you are talking about? The Samar- 
itan children had no voice of their own in the 
business, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: 
the Greek girl was certainly neither boiled, 
nor eaten; but that only makes a difference 
in the dramatic effect; not in the principle. 

Dora (biting her lip). Well, then, tell us 
what we ought to mean. As if you didn't 
teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this 
moment, more than we do, if you wouldn't be 
tiresome ! 

L. I mean, and always have meant, simply 
this, Dora; — that the will of God respecting 
us is that we shall live by each other's happi- 
ness, and life; not by each other's misery, or 
death. I made you read that verse which so 
shocked you just now, because the relations of 
parent and child are typical of all beautiful 
human help. A child may have to die for its 
parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it 
shall rather live for them ; — that, not by its 
sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its force 
of being, it shall be to them renewal of 
strength ; and as the arrow in the hand of the 
giant. So it is in all other right relations. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 119 

Men help each other by their joy, not by their 
sorrow. They are not intended to slay them- 
selves for each other, but to strengthen them- 
selves for each other. And among the many 
apparently beautiful things which turn, 
through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not 
sure but that the thoughtlessly meek and self- 
sacrificing spirit of good men must be named 
as one of the fatalest. They have so often 
been taught that there is a virtue in mere 
suffering, as such; and foolishly to hope that 
good may be brought by Heaven out of all on 
which Heaven itself has set the stamp of evil, 
that we may avoid it, — that they accept pain 
and defeat as if these were their appointed 
portion ; never understanding that their defeat 
is not the less to be mourned because it is 
more fatal to their enemies than to them. 
The one thing that a good man has to do, and 
to see done, is justice; he is neither to slay 
himself nor others causelessly: so far from 
denying himself, since he is pleased by good, 
he is to do his utmost to get his pleasure accom- 
plished. And I only wish there were strength, 
fidelity, and sense enough, among the good 
Englishmen of this day, to render it possible 
for them to band together in avowed brother- 
hood, to enforce, by strength of heart and 
hand, the doing of human justice among all 
who came within their sphere. And finally, 
for your own teaching, observe, although 
there may be need for much self-sacrifice and 
self-denial in the correction of faults of charac- 
ter, the moment the character is formed, the 



120 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

self-denial ceases. Nothing is really well 
done, which it costs you pain to do. 

Violet. But surely, sir, you are always 
pleased with us when we try to please others, 
and not ourselves? 

L. My dear child, in the daily course and 
discipline of right life, we must continually 
and reciprocally submit and surrender in all 
kind and courteous and affectionate ways: and 
these submissions and ministries to each other, 
of which you all know (none better) the 
practice and the preciousness, are as good for 
the yielder as the receiver: they strengthen 
and perfect as much as they soften and refine. 
But the real sacrifice of all our strength, or 
life, or happiness to others (though it may 
be needed, and though all brave creatures hold 
their lives in their hand, to be given, when 
such need comes, as frankly as a soldier gives 
his life in battle), is yet always a mournful and 
momentary necessity: not the fulfillment of 
the continuous law of being. Self-sacrifice 
which is sought after, and triumphed in, is 
usually foolish; and calamitous in its issue: 
and by the sentimental proclamation and pur- 
suit of it, good people have not only made 
most of their own lives useless, but the whole 
framework of their religion so hollow, that at 
this moment, while the English nation, with 
its lips, pretends to teach every man to "love 
his neighbor as himself," with its hands and 
feet it clutches and tramples like a wild beast ; 
and practically lives, every soul of it that can, 
on other people's labor. Briefly, the constant 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 121 

duty of every man to his fellows is to ascer- 
tain his own powers and special gifts; and to 
strengthen them for the help of others. Do 
you think Titian would have helped the world 
better by denying himself, and not painting; 
or Casella by denying himself, and not sing- 
ing! The real virtue is to be ready to sing 
the moment people ask us; as he was, even in 
purgatory. The very word "virtue" means 
not "conduct" but "strength," vital energy 
in the heart. Were you not reading about that 
group of words beginning with V,— vital 
virtuous, vigorous, and so on,— in Max Muller 
the other day, Sibyl? Can't you tell the others 
about it? 

Sibyl. No, I can't; will you tell us, please? 

L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me 
some idle time to-morrow, and I'll tell you 
about it, if all's well. But the gist of it is, 
children, that you should at least know two 
Latin words; recollect that "mors" means 
death and delaying; and "vita" means life 
and growing: and try always, not to mortify 
yourselves, but to vivify yourselves. 

Violet. But, then, are we not to mortify our 
earthly affections? and surely we are to sac- 
rifice ourselves, at least in God's service, if not 
in man's? 

L. Really, Violet, we are getting too 
serious. I've given you enough ethics for one 
talk, I think! Do let us have a little play 
Lily, what were you so busy about, at the ant- 
hill in the wood, this morning? 

Lily. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, 



122 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

not I; I was only trying to help them a 
little. 

L. And they wouldn't be helped, I sup- 
pose? 

Lily. No, indeed. I can't think why ants 
are always so tiresome, when one tries to help 
them! They were carrying bits of stick, as 
fast as they could, through a piece of grass ; 
and pulling and pushing, so hard; and tum- 
bling over and over, — it made one quite pity 
them ; so I took some of the bits of stick, and 
carried them forward a little, where I thought 
they wanted to put them; but instead of being 
pleased, they left them directly, and ran 
about looking quite angry and frightened ; and 
at last ever so many of them got up my 
sleeves, and bit me all over, and I had to come 
away. 

L. I couldn't think what you were about. 
I saw your French grammar lying on the 
grass behind you, and thought perhaps you 
had gone to ask the ants to hear you a French 
verb. 

Isabel. Ah! but you didn't, though! 

L. Why not, Isabel? I knew, well enough, 
Lily couldn't learn that verb by herself. 

Isabel. No; but the ants couldn't help 
her. 

L. Are you sure the ants could not have 
helped you, Lily? 

Lily (thinking). I ought to have learned 
something from them, perhaps. 

L. But none of them left their sticks to 
help you through the irregular verb? 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 123 

Lily. No, indeed. (Laughing, with some 
others.) 

L. What are you laughing at, children? I 
cannot see why the ants should not have left 
their tasks to help Lily in hers,— since here is 
Violet thinking she ought to leave her tasks, 
to help God in His. Perhaps, however, she 
takes Lily's more modest view, and thinks 
only that "He ought to learn something from 
her. ' ' 

(Tears in Violet's eyes.) 

Dora (scarlet). It's too bad— it's a shame- 
— poor Violet ! 

L. My dear children, there's no reason why 
one should be so red, and the other so pale, 
merely because you are made for a moment to 
feel the absurdity of a phrase which you have 
been taught to use, in common with half the 
religious world. There is but one way in 
which man can ever help God— that is, by 
letting God help him: and there is no way in 
which His name is more guiltily taken in vain, 
than by calling the abandonment of our own 
work, the performance of His. 

God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the 
places where He wishes us to be employed; 
and that employment is truly "our Father's 
business. " He chooses work for every creature 
which will be delightful to them, if they do it 
simply and humbly. He gives us always 
strength enough, and sense enough, for what 
He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves 
or puzzle ourselves, it is ourselves, it is our 
own fault. And we may always be sure, 



124 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

whatever we are doing, that we cannot be 
pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves. 
Now, away with you, children; and be as 
happy as you can. And when you cannot, at 
least don't plume yourselves upon pouting. 



LECTURE VII. 
HOME VIRTUES. 



125 



LECTURE VII. 

HOME VIRTUES. 

By the fireside, in the Drawing-room. Eve- 
ning. 

Dora. Now, the curtains are drawn, and 
the fire's bright, and here's your arm-chair — 
and you're to tell us all about what you prom- 
ised. 

L. All about what? 

Dora. All about virtue. 

Kathleen. Yes, and about the words that 
begin with V. 

L. I heard you singing about a word that 
begins with V, in the playground, this morn- 
ing, Miss Katie. 

Kathleen. Me singing! 

Mary. Oh, tell us — tell us. 

L. "Vilikens and his— " 

Kathleen (stopping his mouth). Oh! please! 
don't Where were you? 

Isabel. I'm sure I wish I had known where 
he was! We lost him among the rhododen- 
drons, and I don't know where he got to; oh, 
you naughty — naughty — (climbs on his knee). 

Dora. Now, Isabel, we really want to talk. 

L. I don't. 

Dora. Oh, but you must. You promised, you 
know. 

127 



128 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. Yes, if all was well; but all's ill. I'm 
tired and cross; and I won't. 

Dora. You're not a bit tired, and you're 
not crosser than two sticks; and we'll make 
you talk, if you were crosser than six. Come 
here, Egypt; and get on the other side of 
him. 

(Egypt takes up a commanding position near 
the hearth-brush.) 

Dora (reviewing her forces). Now, Lily, 
come and sit on the rug in front. 

(Lily does as she is bid.) 

L. (seeing he has no chance against the 
odds.) Well, well; but I'm really tired. Go 
and dance a little, first; and let me think. 

Dora. No; you mustn't think. You will be 
wanting to make us think next; that will be 
tiresome. 

L. Well, go and dance first, to get quit of 
thinking: and then I'll talk as long as you 
like. 

Dora. Oh, but we can't dance to-night. 
There isn't time; and we want to hear about 
virtue. 

L. Let me see a little of it first. Dancing is 
the first of girl's virtues. 

Egypt. Indeed! And the second? 

L. Dressing. 

Egypt. Now, you needn't say that! I 
mended that tear the first thing before break- 
fast this morning. 

L. I cannot otherwise express the ethical 
principle, Egypt; whether you have mended 
your gown or not. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 129 

Dora. Now don't be tiresome. We really 
must hear about virtue, please ; seriously. 

L. Well. I'm telling you about it, as fast 
as I can. 

Dora. That the first of girls' virtues is 
dancing? 

L. More accurately, it is wishing to dance, 
and not wishing to tease, nor hear about 
virtue. 

Dora (to Egypt). Isn't he cross? 

Egypt. How many balls must we go to in 
the season, to be perfectly virtuous? 

L. As many as you can without losing your 
color. But I did not say you should wish to 
go to balls. I said you should be always 
wanting to dance. 

Egypt. So we do ; but everybody says it is 
very wrong. 

L. Why, Egypt, I thought — 

"There was a lady once, 
That would not be a queen, — that would she not 
For all the mud in Egypt/' 

You were complaining the other day of having 
to go out a great deal oftener than you liked. 

Egypt. Yes, so I was; but then, it isn't to 
dance. There's no room to dance; it's — 
(Pausing to consider what it is for). 

L. It is only to be seen, I suppose. Well, 
there's no harm in that. Girls ought to like 
to be seen. 

Dora (her eyes flashing). Now, you don't 
mean that; and you're too provoking; and we 
won't dance again, for a month. 

9 Ethics 



130 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. It will answer every purpose of revenge, 
Dora, if you only banish me to the library; 
and dance by yourselves; but I don't think 
Jessie and Lily will agree to that. You like 
me to see you dancing, don't you, Lily? 

Lily. Yes, certainly, — when we doit rightly. 

L. And besides, Miss Dora, if young ladies 
really do not want to be seen, they should take 
care not let their eyes flash when they dislike 
what people say: and, more than that, it is 
all nonsense from beginning to end, about not 
wanting to be seen. I don't know any more 
tiresome flower in the borders than your 
especially "modest" snowdrop; which one 
always has to stoop down and take all sorts of 
tiresome trouble with, and nearly break its 
poor little head off, before you can see it, and 
then, half of it is not worth seeing. Girls 
should be like daisies; nice and white, with an 
edge of red, if you look close; making the 
ground bright wherever they are; knowing 
simply and quietly that they do it ; and are 
meant to do it, and that it would be very 
wrong if they didn't do it. Not want to be 
seen, indeed! How long were you in doing 
up your back hair this afternoon, Jessie? 

(Jessie not immediately answering, Dora 
comes to her assistance.) 

Dora. Not above three-quarters of an hour, 
I think, Jess? 

Jessie (putting her finger up). Now, Do- 
rothy, you needn't talk, you know! 

L. I know she needn't, Jessie; I shall ask 
her about those dark plaits presently. (Dora 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 131 

looks round to see i£ there is any way open 
for retreat.) But never mind; it was worth 
the time, whatever it was, and nobody will 
ever mistake that golden wreath for a chignon: 
but if you don't want it to be seen you had 
better wear a cap. 

Jessie. Ah, now, are you really goingto do 
nothing but play? And we all have been 
thinking, and thinking, all day; and hoping 
you would tell us things; and now — ! 

L. And now I am telling you things, and 
true things, and things good for you ; and you 
won't believe me. You might as well have let 
me go to sleep at once, as I wanted to. (En- 
deavors again to make himself comfortable.) 

Isabel. Oh, no, no, you shan't go to sleep, 
you naughty! — Kathleen, come here. 

L. (knowing what he has to expect if Kath- 
leen comes.) Get away, Isabel, you're too 
heavy. (Sitting up.) What have I been say- 
ing? 

Dora. I do believe he has been asleep all 
the time ! You never heard anything like the 
things you've been saying. 

L. Perhaps not. If you have heard them, 
and anything like them, it is all I want. 

Egypt. Yes, but we don't understand, and 
you know we don't; and we w T ant to. 

L. What did I say first? 

Dora. That the first virtue of girls was 
wanting to go to balls. 

L. I said nothing of the kind. 

Jessie. "Always wanting to dance," you 
said. 



132 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. Yes, and that's true. Their first virtue 
is to be intensely happy; — so happy that they 
don't know what to do with themselves for 
happiness, — and dance, instead of walking. 
Don't you recollect "Louisa," 

"No fountain from a rocky cave 
E'er tripped with foot so free; 
She seemed as happy as a wave 
That dances on the sea." 

A girl is always like that, when everything's 
right with her. 

Violet. But, surely, one must be sad some- 
times? 

L. Yes, Violet, and dull sometimes, and 
stupid sometimes, and cross sometimes. What 
must be, must; but it is always either our 
own fault, or somebody else's. The last and 
worst thing that can be said of a nation is, 
that it has made its young girls sad, and 
weary. 

May. But I am sure I have heard a great 
many people speak against dancing? 

L. Yes, May; but it does not follow they 
were wise as well as good. I suppose they think 
Jeremiah liked better to have to write Lamen- 
tations for his people, than to have to write 
that promise for them, which everybody seems 
to hurry past, that they may get on quickly to 
the verse about Rachel weeping for her 
children; though the verse they pass is the 
counter blessing to that one: "Then shall the 
virgin rejoice in the dance; and both young 
men and old together; and I will turn their 
mourning into joy." 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 133 

(The children get very serous, but look at 
each other as if pleased.) 

Mary. They understand now but, do you 
know what you said next? 

L. Yes; I was not more than half asleep, 
I said their second virtue was dressing. 

Mary. Well! what did you mean by that? 

L. What do you mean b} r dressing? 

Mary. Wearing fine clothes. 

L. Ah! there's the mistake. I mean wear- 
ing plain ones. 

Mary. Yes, I dare say! but that's not what 
girls understand by dressing, you know. 

L. I can't help that. If they understand 
by dressing, buying dresses, perhaps they 
also understand by drawing, buying pictures. 
But when I hear them say they can draw, I 
understand that they can make a drawing; and 
when I hear them say they can dress, I under- 
stand that they can make a dress and — which 
is quite as difficult — wear one. 

Dora. I'm not sure about the making; for 
the wearing, we can all wear them — out, before 
anybody expects it. 

Egypt (aside to L., piteously). Indeed I 
have mended that torn flounce quite neatly; 
look if I haven't! 

L. (aside to Egypt). All right; don't be 
afraid. (Aloud to Dora.) Yes, doubtless; but 
you know that is only a slow way of undress- 
ing. 

Dora. Then, we are all to learn dressmak- 
ing, are we? 

L. Yes; and always to dress yourselves 



134 ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

beautifully — not finely, unless on occasion; 
but then very finely and beautifully, too. Also, 
you are to dress as many other people as you 
can ; and to teach them how to dress, if they 
don't know; and to consider every ill-dressed 
woman or child whom you see anywhere, as a 
personal disgrace; and to get at them, some- 
how, until everybody is as beautifully dressed 
as birds. 

(Silence; the children drawing their breaths 
hard, as if they had come from under a shower 
bath.) 

L. (seeing objections begin to express 
themselves in the eyes.) Now you needn't 
say you can't; for you can and it's what you 
were meant to do, always ; and to dress your 
houses and your gardens, too ; and to do very 
little else, I believe, except singing; and 
dancing, as we said, of course and — one thing 
more. 

Dora. One third and last virtue, I suppose? 

L. Yes; on Violet's system of triplicities. 

Dora. Well, we are prepared for anything 
now. What is it? 

L. Cooking. 

Dora. Cardinal, indeed! If only Beatrice 
were here with her seven handmaids, that she 
might see what a fine eighth we had found 
for her ! 

Mary. And the interpretation? What does 
"cooking" mean? 

L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and 
of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of 
Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba. It 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 135 

means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, 
and balms, and spices; and of all that is heal- 
ing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory 
in meats; it means carefulness, and inventive- 
ness, and watchfulness, and willingness, and 
readiness of appliance; it means the economy 
of your great-grandmothers, and the science of 
modern chemists; it means much tasting, and 
no wasting; it means English thoroughness, 
and French art, and Arabian hospitality; it 
means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and 
always ' 'ladies" * 'loaf-givers," and, as you 
are to see, imperatively, that everybody has 
something pretty to put on, — so you are to see, 
yet more imperatively, that everybody has 
something nice to eat. 

(Another pause, and long drawn breath.) 

Dora (slowly recovering herself to Egypt). 
We had better have let him go to sleep, I 
think, after all! 

L. You had better let the younger ones go 
to sleep now: for I haven't half done. 

Isabel (panic-struck). Oh! please, please! 
just one quarter of an hour. 

L. No, Isabel; I cannot say what I've got 
to say in a quarter of an hour, and it is too 
hard for you, besides : — you would be lying 
awake, and trying to make 'it out, half the 
night. That will never do. 

Isabel. Oh, please! 

I/. It would please me exceedingly, mousie : 
but there are times when we must both be 
displeased; more's the pity. Lily may stay 
for half an hour, if she likes. 



136 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Lily. I can't, because Isey never goes to 
sleep, if she is waiting for me to come. 

Isabel. Oh, yes, Lily; I'll go to sleep to- 
night. I will, indeed. 

Lily. Yes, it's very likely, Isey, with those 
fine round eyes! (To L.) You'll tell me 
something of what you've been saying to-mor- 
row, won't you? 

L. No, 1 won't, Lily. You must choose. 
It's only in Miss Edgeworth's novels that one 
can do right, and have one's cake and sugar 
afterward, as well (not that I consider the 
dilemma, to-night, so grave). 

(Lily sighing, takes Isabel's hand.) 

Yes, Lily dear, it will be better, in the out- 
come of it, so, than if you were to hear all the 
talks that ever were talked, and all the stories 
that ever were told. Good-night. 

(The door leading to the condemned cells of 
the dormitory closes on Lily, Isabel, Florrie, 
and other diminutive and submissive victims.) 

Jessie (after a pause). Why, I thought you 
were so fond of Miss Edgeworth. 

L. So I am ; and so you ought all to be. I 
can read her over and over again, without ever 
tiring; there's no one whose every page is so 
full, and so delightful; no one who brings you 
into the company of pleasanter or wiser people ; 
no one who tells you more truly to do right. 
And it is very nice, in the midst of a wild 
world, to have the very ideal of poetical jus- 
tice done always to one's hand : — to have every- 
body found out who tells lies; and every- 
body decorated with a red ribbon, who doesn't; 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 137 

and to see the good Laura, who gave away 
her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation 
from an entire dinner party disturbed for the 
purpose ; and poor, dear, little Rosamond, who 
chooses purple jars instead of new shoes, left 
at last without either her shoes or her bottle. 
But it isn't life: and, in the way children 
might easily understand it, it isn't morals. 

Jessie. How do you mean we might under- 
stand it? 

L. You might think Miss Edgeworth meant 
that the right was to be done mainly because 
one is always rewarded for doing it. It is an 
injustice to her to say that; her heroines 
always do right simply for its own sake, as 
they should; and her examples of conduct and 
motive are wholly admirable. But her repre- 
sentation of events is false and misleading. 
Her good characters never are brought into the 
deadly trial of goodness, — the doing right, and 
suffering for it, quite finally. And that is life, 
as God arranges it. "Taking up one's cross" 
does not at all mean having ovations at dinner 
parties, and being put over everybody else's 
head. 

Dora. But what does it mean then? That is 
just what we couldn't understand, when you 
were telling us about not sacrificing ourselves, 
yesterday. 

L. My dear, it means simply that you are 
to go the road which you see to be the straight 
one ; carrying whatever you find is given you 
to carry, as well and stoutly as you can ; with- 
out making faces, or calling people to come and 



138 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

look at you. Above all, you are neither to 
load, nor unload, yourself; nor cut your cross 
to your own liking. Some people think it 
would be better for them to have it large; and 
many, that they could carry it much faster if 
it were small; and even those who like it 
largest are usually very particular about its 
being ornamental, and made of the best ebony. 
But all that you have really to do is to keep 
your back as straight as you can, and not 
think about what is upon it — above all, not to 
boast of what is upon it. The real and essen- 
tial meaning of ' 'virtue" is in that straight- 
ness of back. Yes; you may laugh, children, 
but it is. You know I was to tell you about 
the words that began with V. Sibyl, what 
does " virtue' ' mean literally? 

Sibyl. Does it mean courage? 

L. Yes ; but a particular kind of courage. 
It means courage of the nerve ; vital courage. 
That first syllable of it, if you look in Max 
Muller, you will find really means ' 'nerve," 
and from it come "vis, " and "vir," and 
"virgin" (through vireo), and the connected 
word "virga" — "a rod"; — the green rod, or 
springing bough of a tree, being the type of 
perfect human strength, both in the use of it 
in the Mosaic story, when it becomes a serpent, 
or strikes the rock; or when Aaron's bears its 
almonds; and in the metaphorical expressions, 
the "Rod out of the stem of Jesse, " and the 
"Man whose name is the Branch," and so on. 
And the essential idea of real virtue is that of 
a vital human strength, which instinctively, 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 139 

constantly, and without motive, does what is 
right. You must train men to this by habit, 
as you would the branch of a tree ; and give 
them instincts and manners (or morals) of 
purity, justice, kindness, and courage. Once 
rightly trained, they act as they should irre- 
spectively of all motive, of fear, or of reward. 
It is the blackest sign of putrescence in a 
national religion, when men speak as if it were 
the only safeguard of conduct ; and assume 
that, but for the fear of being burned, or for 
the hope of being rewarded, everybody would 
pass their lives in lying, stealing, and murder- 
ing. I think quite one of the notablest histor- 
ical events of this century (perhaps the very 
notablest), was that council of clergymen, 
horror-struck at the idea of any diminution in 
our dread of hell, at which the last of English 
clergymen whom one would have expected to 
see in such a function, rose as the devil's ad- 
vocate; to tell us how impossible it was we 
could get on without him. 

Violet (after a pause). But, surely, if people 
weren't afraid — (hesitates again). 

L. They should be afraid of doing wrong, 
and of that only, my dear. Otherwise, if they 
only don't do wrong for fear of being pun- 
ished, they have done wrong in their hearts 
already. 

Violet. Well, but surely, at least one ought 
to be afraid of displeasing God; and one's 
desire to please Him should be one's first 
motive? 

L. He never would be pleased with us, if 



140 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

it were, my dear. When a father sends his son 
out into the world — suppose as an apprentice — 
fancy the boy's coming home at night, and 
saying, 44 Father, I could have robbed the till 
to-day; but I didn't, because I thought you 
wouldn't like it." Do you think the father 
would be particularly pleased? 

(Violet is silent.) 

He would answer, would he not, if he were 
wise and good, "My boy, though you had no 
father, you must not rob tills"? And nothing 
is ever done so as really to please our Great 
Father, unless we would also have done it, 
though we had no Father to know of it. 

Violet (after long pause). But, then, what 
continual threatenings, and promises of reward 
there are! 

L. And how vain both! with the Jews, and 
with all of us. But the fact is, that the threat 
and promise are simple statements of the 
Divine law, and of its consequences. The 
fact is truly told you, — make what use you may 
of it: and as collateral warning, or encourage- 
ment, comfort, the knowledge of future conse- 
quences may often be helpful to us: but help- 
ful chiefly to the better state when we can act 
without reference to them. And there's no 
measuring the poisoned influence of that notion 
of future reward on the mind of Christian 
Europe, in the early ages. Half the monastic 
system rose out of that, acting on the occult 
pride and ambition of good people (as the 
other half of it came of their follies and mis- 
fortunes). There is always a considerable 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 141 

quantity of pride, to begin with, in what is 
called "giving one's self to God. " As if one 
had ever belonged to anybody else! 

Dora. But, surely, great good has come 
out of the monastic system — our books — our 
sciences — all saved by the monks? 

L. Saved from what, my dear? From the 
abyss of misery and ruin which that false 
Christianity allowed the whole active world 
to live in. When it had become the principal 
amusement, and the most admired art of 
Christian men, to cut one another's throats, 
and burn one another's towns; of course, the 
few feeble or reasonable persons left, who de- 
sired quiet, safety, and kind fellowship, got 
into cloisters; and the gentlest, thoughtfullest, 
noblest men and women shut themselves up, 
precisely where they could be of least use. 
They are very fine things, for us painters, 
now — the towers and white arches upon the 
tops of the rocks; always in places where it 
takes a day's climbing to get at them; but the 
intense tragi-comedy of the thing, when one 
thinks of it, is unspeakable. All the good 
people of the world getting themselves hung 
up out of the way of mischief, like Bailie Nicol 
Jarvie; — poor little lambs, as it were, dangling 
there for the sign of the Golden Fleece ; or 
like Socrates in his basket in the "Clouds"! 
(I must read you that bit of Aristophanes 
again, by the way.) And believe me, chil- 
dren, I am no warped witness, as far as regards 
monasteries ; or if I am, it is in their favor. I 
have always had a strong leaning that way ; 



142 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

and have pensively shivered with Augustines 
at St. Bernard; and happily made hay with 
Franciscans at Fesole; and sat silent with 
Carthusians in their little gardens, south o£ 
Florence; and mourned through many a day- 
dream, at Melrose and Bolton. But the wonder 
is always to me, not how much, but how little, 
the monks have, on the whole, done, with all 
that leisure, and all that goodwill! What 
nonsense monks characteristically wrote; — 
what little progress they made in the sciences 
to which they devoted themselves as a duty, — 
medicine especially; and, last and worst, what 
depths of degradation they can sometimes see 
one another, and the population round them, 
sink into; without either doubting their sys- 
tem, or reforming it! 

(Seeing questions rising to lips.) Hold 
your little tongues, children; it's very late, 
and you'll make me forget what I've to say. 
Fancy yourselves in pews, for five minutes. 
There's one point of possible good in the con- 
ventual system, which is always attractive to 
young girls; and the idea is a very dangerous 
one; — the notion of a merit, or exalting virtue, 
consisting in a habit of meditation on the 
"things above," or things of the next world. 
Now it is quite true, that a person of beautiful 
mind, dwelling on whatever appears to them 
most desirable and lovely in a possible future, 
will not only pass their time pleasantly, but 
will even acquire, at last, a vague and wildly 
gentle charm of manner and feature, which 
will give them an air of peculiar sanctity in the 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 143 

eyes of others. Whatever real or apparent 
good there may be in this result, I want you 
to observe, children, that we have no real 
authority for the reveries to which it is owing. 
We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly 
world ; except that it will be free from sorrow, 
and pure from sin. What is said of pearl gates, 
golden floors, and the like, is accepted as 
merely figurative by religious enthusiasts 
themselves; and whatever they pass their 
time in conceiving, whether of the happiness 
of risen souls, of their intercourse, or of the 
appearance and employment of the heavenly 
powers, is entirely the product of their own 
imagination; and as completely and distinctly 
a work of fiction, or romantic invention, as 
any novel of Sir Walter Scott's. That the 
romance is founded on religious theory or doc- 
trine; — that no disagreeable or wicked persons 
are admitted into the story; — and that the in- 
ventor fervently hopes that some portion of it 
may hereafter come true, does not in the least 
alter the real nature of the effort or enjoyment. 
Now, whatever indulgence may be granted 
to amiable people for pleasing themselves in 
this innocent way, it is beyond question, that 
to seclude themselves from the rough duties 
of life, merely to write religious romances, or, 
as in most cases merely to dream them, with- 
out taking so much trouble as is implied in 
writing, ought not to be received as an act of 
heroic virtue. But, observe, even in admitting 
thus much, I have assumed that the fancies 
are just and beautiful, though fictitious. Now 



144 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

what right have any of us to assume that our 
own fancies will assuredly be either the one 
or the other? That they delight us, and ap- 
pear lovely to us, is no real proof of its not 
being wasted time to form them ; and we may 
surely be led somewhat to distrust our judg- 
ment of them by observing what ignoble imag- 
inations have sometimes sufficiently, or even 
enthusiastically occupied the hearts of others. 
The principal source of the spirit of religious 
contemplation is the East ; now I have here in 
my hand a Byzantine image of Christ, which, 
if you will look at it seriously, may, I think, 
at once and forever render you cautious in the 
indulgence of a merely contemplative habit of 
mind. Observe, it is the fashion to look at 
such a thing only as a piece of barbarous art ; 
that is the smallest part of its interest. What 
I want you to see is the baseness and falseness 
of a religious state of enthusiasm in which 
such a work could be dwelt upon with pious 
pleasure. That a figure, with two small round 
black beads for eyes ; a gilded face, deep cut 
into, horrible wrinkles, an open gash for a 
mouth, and a distorted skeleton for a body, 
wrapped about, to make it fine, with striped 
enamel of blue and gold ; that such a figure, 
I say, should ever have been thought helpful 
towards the conception of a Redeeming Deity, 
may make you, I think, very doubtful, even 
of the Divine approval, — much more of the 
Divine inspiration, — of religious reverie in 
general. You feel, doubtless, that your own 
idea of Christ would be something very different 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 145 

from* this; but in what does the difference con- 
sist? Not in any more divine authority in your 
imagination; but in the intellectual work of 
six intervening centuries; which, simply, by 
artistic discipline, has refined this crude con- 
ception for you, and filled you, partly with an 
innate sensation, partly with an acquired 
knowledge, of higher forms, — which render 
this Byzantine crucifix as horrible to you, as it 
was pleasing to its maker. More is required 
to excite your fancy; but your fancy is of no 
more authority than his was: and a point of 
national art-skill is quite conceivable, in which 
the best we can do now will be as offensive to 
the religious dreamers of the more highly 
cultivated time, as this Byzantine crucifix is 
to you. 

Mary. But surely, Angelico will always 
retain his power over everybody? 

L. Yes, I should think, always; as the 
gentle words of a child will; but you would be 
much surprised, Mary, if you thoroughly took 
the pains to analyze, and had the perfect 
means of analyzing, that power of Angelico, — 
to discover its real sources. Of course, it is 
natural, at first, to attribute it to the pure 
religious fervor by which he was inspired; 
but do you suppose Angelico was really the 
only monk, in all the Christian world of the 
middle ages, who labored in art, with a sincere 
religious enthusiasm? 

Mary. No, certainly not. 

L. Anything more frightful, more destruc- 
tive of all religious faith whatever, than such 

10 Ethics 



146 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

a supposition, could not be. And yet, what 
other monk ever produced such work? I have 
myself examined carefully upwards of two 
thousand illuminated missals, with especial 
view to the discovery of any evidence of a 
similar result upon the art, from the monkish 
devotion ; and utterly in vain. 

Mary. But then, was not Fra Angelico a 
man of entirely separate and exalted genius? 

L. Unquestionably ; and granting him to be 
that, the peculiar phenomenon in his art is, to 
me, not its loveliness, but its weakness. The 
effect of "inspiration," had it been real, on a 
man of consummate genius, should have been, 
one would have thought, to make everything 
that he did faultless and strong, no less than 
lovely. But of all men, deserving to be called 
"great," Fra Angelico permits to himself the 
least pardonable faults, and the most palpable 
follies. There is evidently within him a sense 
of grace, and power of invention, as great as 
Ghiberti's: — we are in the habit of attributing 
those high qualities to his religious enthusiasm ; 
but, if they were produced by that enthusiasm 
in him, they ought to be produced by the same 
feelings in others ; and we see they are not. 
Whereas, comparing him with contemporary 
great artists, of equal grace and invention, one 
peculiar character remains notable in him — 
which, logically, we ought, therefore, to at- 
tribute to the religious fervor; — and that dis- 
tinctive character is, the contented indulgence 
of his own weaknesses, and perseverance in 
his own ignorances. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 147 

Mary. But that's dreadful! And what is 
the sourse of the peculiar charm which we all 
feel in his work? 

L. There are many sources of it, Mary; 
united and seeming like one. You would 
never feel that charm but in the work of an 
entirely good man; be sure of that; but the 
goodness is only the recipient and modifying 
element, not the creative one. Consider care- 
fully what delights you in any original picture 
of Angelico's. You will find, for one minor 
thing, an exquisite variety and brightness of 
ornamental work. That is not Angelico's in- 
spiration. It is the final result of the labor 
and thought of millions of artists, of all 
nations; from the earliest Egyptian potters 
downwards — Greeks, Byzantines, Hindoos, 
Arabs, Gauls, and Northmen — all joining in 
the toil ; and consummating it in Florence, in 
that century, with such embroidery of robe 
and inlaying of armor as had never been seen 
till then; nor probably, ever will be seen 
more. Angelico merely takes his share of this 
inheritance, and applies it in the tenderest 
way to subjects which are peculiarly acceptant 
of it. But the inspiration, if it exists any- 
where, flashes on the knight's shield quite as 
radiantly as on the monk's picture. Examin- 
ing farther into the source of your emotions 
in the Angelico work, you will find much of 
the impression of sanctity dependent on a sin- 
gular repose and grace of gesture, consummat- 
ing itself in the floating, flying, and, above all, 
in the dancing groups. That is not Angelico's 



148 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

inspiration. It is only a peculiarly tender use 
of systems of grouping which had been long 
before developed by Giotto, Memmi, and 
Orcagna; and the real root of it all is simply — 
What do you think, children? The beautiful 
dancing of the Florentine maidens! 

Dora (indignant again). Now, I wonder 
what next! Why not say it all depended on 
Herodias , daughter, at once? 

L. Yes; it is certainty a great argument 
against singing that there were once sirens. 

Dora. Well, it may be all very fine and 
philosophical, but shouldn't I just like to read 
you the end of the second volume of " Modern 
Painters"! 

L. My dear, do you think any teacher 
could be worth your listening to, or anybody 
else's listening to, who had learned nothing, 
and altered his mind in nothing, from seven 
and twenty to seven and forty? But that sec- 
ond volume is very good for you as far as it 
goes. It is a great advance, and a thoroughly 
straight and swift one, to be led, as it is the 
main business of that second volume to lead 
you, from Dutch cattle-pieces, and ruffian- 
pieces, to Fra Angelico. And it is right for 
you also, as you grow older, to be strengthen- 
ed in the general sense and judgment which 
may enable you to distinguish the weaknesses 
from the virtues of what you love, else you 
might come to love both alike; or even the 
weaknesses without virtues. You might end 
by liking Overbeck and Cornelius as well as 
Angelico. However, I have perhaps been 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 149 

leaning a little too much to the merely practi- 
cal side of things, in to-night's talk; and you 
are always to remember, children, that I do 
not deny, though I cannot affirm, the spiritual 
advantages resulting, in certain cases, from 
enthusiastic religious reverie, and from the 
other practices of saints and anchorites. The 
evidence respecting them has never yet been 
honestly collected, much less dispassionately 
examined: but, assuredly, there is in that 
direction a probability, and more than a prob- 
ability, of dangerous error, while there is none 
whatever in the practice of an active, cheerful 
and benevolent life. The hope of attaining a 
higher religious position, which induces us to 
encounter, for its exalted alternative, the risk 
of unhealthy error, is often, as I said, founded 
more on pride than piety; and those who, in 
modest usefulness, have accepted what seemed 
to them here the lowliest place in the kingdom 
of their Father, are not, I believe, the least 
likely to receive hereafter the command, then 
unmistakable, "Friend, go up higher. " 



134 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

beautifully — not finely, unless on occasion; 
but then very finely and beautifully, too. Also, 
you are to dress as many other people as you 
can ; and to teach them how to dress, if they 
don't know ; and to consider every ill-dressed 
woman or child whom you see a^^where, as a 
personal disgrace; and to get at them, some- 
how, until everybody is as beautifully dressed 
as birds. 

(Silence; the children drawing their breaths 
hard, as if they had come from under a shower 
bath.) 

L. (seeing objections begin to express 
themselves in the eyes). Now you needn't 
say you can't; for you can and it's what you 
were meant to do, always; and to dress your 
houses and your gardens, too ; and to do very 
little else, I believe, except singing; and 
dancing, as we said, of course and — one thing 
more. 

Dora. One third and last virtue, I suppose? 

L. Yes; on Violet's system of triplicities. 

Dora. Well, we are prepared for anything 
now. What is it? 

L. Cooking. 

Dora. Cardinal, indeed! If only Beatrice 
were here with her seven handmaids, that she 
might see what a fine eighth we had found 
for her ! 

Mary. And the interpretation? What does 
44 cooking" mean? 

L. It means the knowledge of Medea, and 
of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of 
Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba. It 



LECTURE VIII. 
CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 



151 



LECTURE VIII. 

CRYSTAL CAPRICE. 

Formal Lecture in Schoolroom, after some 
practical examination of minerals. 

L. We have seen enough, children, though 
very little of what might be seen if we had 
more time, of mineral structures produced by- 
visible opposition, or contest among elements ; 
structures of which the variety, however great, 
need not surprise us: for we quarrel, our- 
selves, for many and slight causes; — much 
more, one should think, may crystals, who 
can only feel the antagonism, not argue about 
it. But there is a yet more singular mimicry 
of our human ways in the varieties of form 
which appear owing to no antagonistic force ; 
but merely to the variable humor and caprice 
of the crystals themselves : and I have asked 
you all to come into the schoolroom to-day, 
because, of course, this is a part of the crystal 
mind which must be peculiarly interesting to 
a feminine audience. (Great symptoms of 
disapproval on the part of said audience.) 
Now you need not pretend that it will not 
interest you; why should it not? It is true 
that we men are never capricious; but that 
only makes us the more dull and disagreeable. 
You, who are crystalline in brightness, as well 

153 



154 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

as in caprice, charm infinitely, by infinitude of 
change. (Audible murmurs of " Worse and 
worse!" "As if we could be got over that 
way!" Etc. The Lecturer, however, observing 
the expression of the features to be more com- 
placent, proceeds.) And the most curious 
mimicry, if not of your changes of fashion, at 
least of your various modes (in healthy peri- 
ods) of natural costume, takes place among 
the crystals of different countries. With a lit- 
tle experience, it is quite possible to say at a 
glance, in what districts certain crystals have 
been found; and although, if we had knowl- 
edge extended and accurate enough, we might 
of course ascertain the laws and circumstances 
which have necessarily produced the form 
peculiar to each locality, this would be just as 
true of the fancies of the human mind. If we 
could know the exact circumstances which 
affect it, we could foretell what now seems to 
us only caprice of thought, as well as what 
now seems to us only caprice of crystal : nay, 
so far as our knowledge reaches, it is on the 
whole easier to find some reason why the 
peasant girls of Berne should wear their caps 
in the shape of butterflies; and the peasant 
girls of Munich theirs in the shape of shells, 
than to say why the rock-crystals of Dauphine 
should all have their summits of the shape of 
lip-pieces of flageolets, while those of the St. 
Gothard are symmetrical ; or why the fluor of 
Chamouni is rose-colored, and in octahedrons, 
while the fluor of Weardale is green, and in 
cubes. Still farther removed is the hope, at 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 155 

present, x>£ accounting for minor differences in 
modes of grouping and construction. Take, 
for instance, the caprices of this single min- 
eral, quartz; — variations upon a single theme. 
It has many forms; but see what it will make 
out of this one, the six-sided prism. For 
shortness' sake, I shall call the body of the 
prism its "column, " and the pyramid at the 
extremities its "cap." Now, here first you 
have a straight column, as long and thin as a 
stalk of asparagus, with two little caps at the 
ends ; and here you have a short thick column, 
as solid as a haystack, with two fat caps at the 
ends ; and here you have two caps fastened to- 
gether, and no column at all between them! 
Then here is a crystal with its column fat in 
the middle, and tapering to a little cap ; and 
here is one stalked like a mushroom, with a 
huge cap put on the top of a slender column! 
Then here is a column built wholly out of lit- 
tle caps, with a large smooth cap at the top. 
And here is a column built of columns and 
caps; the caps all truncated about half-way to 
their points. And in both these last, the little 
crystals are set anyhow, and build the large 
one in a disorderly way ; but here is a crystal 
made of columns and truncated caps, set in 
regular terraces all the way up. 

Mary. But are not these groups of crystals, 
rather than one crystal? 

L. What do you mean by a group, and what 
by one crystal? 

Dora (audibly aside, to Mary, who is 



156 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

brought to pause). You know you are never 
expected to answer, Mary. 

L. I'm sure this is easy enough. What do 
you mean by a group of people? 

Mary. Three or four together, or a good 
many together, like the caps in these crystals. 

L. But when a great many persons get to- 
gether they don't take the shape of one person? 

(Mary still at pause.) 

Isabel. No, because they can't; but you 
know the crystals can; so why shouldn't they? 

L. Well, they don't; that is to say, they 
don't always, or even often. Look here, Isa- 
bel. 

Isabel. What a nasty ugly thing ! 

L. I'm glad you think it so ugly. Yet it 
is made of beautiful crystals; they are a little 
gray and cold in color, but most of them are 
clear. 

Isabel. But they're in such horrid, horrid 
disorder! 

L. Yes; all disorder is horrid, when it is 
among things that are naturally orderly. 
Some little girls' rooms are naturally disord- 
erly, I suppose; or I don't know how they 
could live in them, if they cry out so when 
they only see quartz crystals in confusion. 

Isabel. Oh! how come they to be like that? 

L. You may well ask. And yet you will 
always hear people talking as if they thought 
order more wonderful than disorder! It is won- 
derful — as we have seen; but to me, as to you, 
child, the supremely wonderful thing is that 
nature should ever be ruinous, or wasteful, or 




[ This black thing is called ' Tourmaline.' "—Page 173, 

The Ethics of the Dust. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 157 

deathf ul ! I look at this wild piece of crystal- 
lization with endless astonishment. 

Mary. Where does it come from? 

L. The Tete Noire of Chamouni. What 
makes it more strange is that it should be in a 
vein of fine quartz. If it were in a moldering 
rock, it would be natural enough; but in the 
midst of so fine substance, here are the crys- 
tals tossed in a heap; some large, myriads 
small (almost as small as dust), tumbling over 
each other like a terrified crowd, and glued 
together by the sides, and edges, and backs, 
and heads; some warped, and some pushed 
out and in, and all spoiled, and each spoiling 
the rest. 

Mary. And how fiat they all are? 

L. Yes; that's the fashion at the Tete 
Noire. 

Mary. But surely this is ruin, not caprice! 

L. I believe it is in great part misfortune ; 
and we will examine these crystal troubles in 
next lecture. But if you want to see the 
gracefullest and happiest caprices of which 
dust is capable, you must go to the Hartz; not 
that I ever mean to go there myself, for I 
want to retain the romantic feeling about the 
name; and I have done myself some harm 
already by seeing the monotonous and heavy 
form of the Brocken from the suburbs of 
Brunswick. But whether the mountains be 
picturesque or not, the tricks which the gob- 
lins (as I am told) teach the crystals in them, 
are incomparably pretty. They work chiefly 
on the mind of a docile, bluish-colored carbon- 



158 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

ate of lime ; which comes out of a gray lime- 
stone. The goblins take the greatest possible 
care of its education, and see that nothing hap- 
pens to it to hurt its temper; and when it may 
be supposed to have arrived at the crisis which 
is to a well brought up mineral what presen- 
tation at court is to a young lady — after which 
it is expected to set fashions — there's no end 
to its pretty ways of behaving. First it will 
make itself into pointed darts as fine as hoar- 
frost; here, it is changed into a white fur as 
fine as silk ; here into little crowns and circ- 
lets, as bright as silver, as if for the gnome 
princesses to wear; here it is beautiful little 
plates, for them to eat off ; presently it is in 
towers which they might be imprisoned in; 
presently in caves and cells, where they may 
make nun-gnomes of themselves, and no 
gnome ever hear of them more; here is some 
of it in sheaves, like corn; here, some in 
drifts, like snow; here, some in rays, like 
stars: and, though these are, all of them, 
necessarily, shapes that the mineral takes in 
other places, they are all taken here with such 
a grace that you recognize the high caste and 
breeding of the crystals wherever you meet 
them, and know at once they are Hartz-born. 
Of course, such fine things as these are only 
done by crystals which are perfectly good, and 
good-humored; and of course, also, there are 
ill-humored crystals, who torment each other 
and annoy quieter crystals, yet without coming 
to anything like serious war. Here (for once), 
is some ill-disposed quartz, tormenting a peace- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 159 

able octahedron of fluor, in mere caprice. I 
looked at it the other night so long, and so 
wonderingly, just before putting my candle out, 
that I fell into another strange dream. But 
you don't care about dreams. 

Dora. No; we didn't yesterday; but you 
know we are made up of caprice ; so we do, 
to-day: and you must tell it us directly. 

L. Well, you see, Neith and her work were 
still much in my mind; and then, I had been 
looking over these Hartz things for you, and 
thinking of the sort of grotesque sympathy 
there seemed to be in them with the beautiful 
fringe and pinnacle work of Northern architec- 
ture. So, when I fell asleep, I thought I saw 
Neith and St. Barbara talking together. 

Dora. But what had St. Barbara to do with 
it? 

L. My dear, I am quite sure St. Barbara 
is the patroness of good architects; not St. 
Thomas, whatever the old builders thought. 
It might be very fine, according to the monks' 
notions, in St. Thomas, to give all his em- 
ployer's money away to the poor: but breaches 
of contract are bad foundations; and I believe, 
it was not he but St. Barbara, who overlooked 
the work in all the buildings you and I care 
about. However that may be, it was certainly 
she whom I saw in my dream with Neith. 
Neith was sitting weaving, and I thought she 
looked sad, and drew her shuttle slowly; and 
St. Barbara was standing at her side, in a stiff 
little gown, all ins and outs, and angles; but 
so bright with embroidery that it dazzled me 



160 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

whenever she moved; the train of it was just 
like a heap of broken jewels, it was so stiff, 
and full of corners, and so many-colored, and 
bright. Her hair fell over her shoulders in 
long, delicate waves, from under a little three- 
pinnacled crown, like a tower. She was ask- 
ing Neith about the laws of architecture in 
Egypt and Greece; and when Neith told her 
the measures of the pyramids, St. Barbara 
said she thought they would have been better 
three-cornered: and when Neith told her the 
measures of the Parthenon, St. Barbara said 
she thought it ought to have had two tran- 
septs. But she was pleased when Neith told 
her of the temple of the dew, and of the 
Caryan maidens bearing its frieze: and then 
she thought that perhaps Neith would like to 
hear what sort of temples she was building 
herself, in the French valleys, and on the 
crags of the Rhine. So she began gossiping, 
just as one of you might to an old lady: and 
certainly she talked in the sweetest way in 
the world to Neith ; and explained to her all 
about crockets and pinnacles: and Neith sat, 
looking very grave ; and always graver as St. 
Barbara went on; till at last, I am sorry to say, 
St. Barbara lost her temper a little. 

May (very grave herself). "St Barbara?" 

L. Yes, May. Why shouldn't she? It was 
very tiresome of Neith to sit looking like that 

May. But, then, St. Barbara was a saint! 

L. What's that, May? 

May. A saint! A saint is — I am sure you 
know! 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST, 161 

L. If I did, it would not make me sure that 
you knew too, May: but I don't. 

Violet (expressing the incredulity of the 
audience) . Oh, — sir ! 

L. That is to say, I know that people are 
called saints who are supposed to be better 
than others: but I don't know how much bet- 
ter they must be, in order to be saints ; nor 
how nearly anybody may be a saint, and yet 
not be quite one; nor whether everybody who 
is called a saint was one ; nor whether every- 
body who isn't called a saint, isn't one. 

(General silence; the audience feeling them- 
selves on the verge of the Infinities, and a 
little shocked, and much puzzled by so many 
questions at once.) 

L. Besides, did you never hear that verse 
about being "called to be saints"? 

May (repeats Rom. i. 7). 

L. Quite right, May. Well, then, who are 
called to be that? People in Rome only? 

May. Everybody, I suppose, whom God 
loves. 

L. What ! little girls as well as other people? 

May. All grown-up people, I mean. 

L. Why not little girls? Are they wickeder 
when they are little? 

May. Oh, I hope not. 

L. Why not little girls, then? 

(Pause.) 

Lily. Because, you know, we can't be 
worth anything if we're ever so good; — I 
mean if we try to be ever so good ; and we 
can't do difficult things— like saints. 

11 Ethics 



162 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

L. I am afraid, my dear, that old people 
are not more able or willing for their difficul- 
ties than you children are for yours. All I 
can say is, that if ever I see any of you, when 
you are seven or eight and twenty, knitting 
your brows over any work you want to do or 
to understand, as I saw you, Lily, knitting 
your brows over your slate this morning, I 
should think you very noble women. But — 
to come back to my dream — St. Barbara did 
lose her temper a little; and I was not sur- 
prised. For you can't think how provoking 
Neith looked, sitting there just like a statue 
of sandstone; only going on weaving, like a 
machine ; and never quickening the cast of her 
shuttle ; while St. Barbara was telling her so 
eagerly all about the most beautiful' things, and 
chattering away, as fast as bells ring on 
Christmas Eve, till she saw that Neith didn't 
care; and then St. Barbara got as red as a rose, 
and stopped, just in time; — or I think she 
would really have said something naughty. 

Isabel. Oh, please, but didn't Neith say 
anything then? 

L. Yes. She said, quite quietly, "It may 
be very pretty, my love; but it is all non- 
sense/' 

Isabel. Oh dear, oh dear; and then? 

L. Well; then I was a little angry myself, 
and hoped St. Barbara would be quite angry; 
but she wasn't. She bit her lips first; and 
then gave a sigh — such a wild, sweet sigh — <■ 
and then she knelt down and hid her face on 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 163 

Neith's knee. Then Neith smiled a little, and 
was moved. 

Isabel. Oh, I am so glad! 

L. And she touched St. Barbara's forehead 
with a flower of white lotus ; and St. Barbara 
sobbed once or twice, and then said: " If you 
only could see how beautiful it is, and how 
much it makes people feel what is good and 
lovely; and if you could only hear the chil- 
dren singing in the Lady chapels!" And 
Neith smiled, — but still sadly, — and said, 
"How do you know what I have seen, or 
heard, my love? Do you think all those vaults 
and towers of yours have been built without 
me? There was not a pillar in your Giotto's 
Santa Maria del Fiore which I did not set true 
by my spearshaft as it rose. But this pinnacle 
and flame work which has set your little heart 
on fire is all vanity; and you will soon see 
what it will come to, and none will grieve for 
it more than I. And then every one will dis- 
believe your pretty symbols and types. Men 
must be spoken simply to, my dear, if you 
would guide them kindly, and long." But St. 
Barbara answered, that, "Indeed she thought 
every one liked her work," and that "the 
people of different towns were as eager about 
their cathedral towers as about their privileges 
or their markets;" and then she asked Neith 
to come and build something with her, wall 
against tower; and "see whether the people 
will be as much pleased with your buildings 
as with mine. " But Neith answered, "I will 
not contend with you, my dear. I strive not 



164 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

with those who love me, and for those who 
hate me, it is not well to strive with me, as 
weaver Arachne knows. And remember, 
child, that nothing is ever done beautifully, 
which is done in rivalship; nor nobly, which is 
done in pride." 

Then St. Barbara hung her head quite down, 
and said she was very sorry she had been so 
foolish; and kissed Neith; and stood thinking 
a minute: and then her eyes got bright again, 
and she said, she would go directly and build 
a chapel with five windows in it; four for the 
four cardinal virtues, and one for humility, in 
the middle, bigger than the rest. And Neith 
very nearly laughed quite out, I thought; cer- 
tainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness 
for an instant; then she said, "Well, love, 
build it, but do not put so many colors into 
your windows as you usually do; else no one 
will be able to see to read, inside: and when it 
is built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, 
and not an archbishop." St. Barbara started 
a little, I thought, and turned as if to say some- 
thing; but changed her mind, and gathered up 
her train, and went out. And Neith bent her- 
self again to her loom, in which she was weav- 
ing a web of strange dark colors, I thought; 
but perhaps it was only after the glittering of 
St. Barbara's embroidered train; and I tried 
to make out the figures in Neith's web. and 
confused myself among them, as one always 
does in dreams; and then the dream changed 
altogether, and I found myself, all at once, 
among a crowd of little Gothic and Egyptian 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 165 

spirits, who were quarreling; at least the 
Gothic ones were trying to quarrel; for the 
Egyptian ones only sat with their hands on 
their knees, and their aprons sticking out very 
stiffly; and stared. And after awhile I began 
to understand what the matter was. It 
seemed that some of the troublesome building 
imps, who meddle and make continually, even 
in the best Gothic work, had been listening to 
St. Barbara's talk with Neith; and had made 
up their minds that Neith had no workpeople 
who could build against them. They were but 
dull imps, as you may fancy, by their thinking 
that ; and never had done much, except disturb- 
ing the great Gothic building angels at their 
work, and playing tricks to each other; indeed, 
of late they had been living years and years, 
like bats, up under the cornices of Strasbourg 
and Cologne cathedrals, with nothing to do 
but to make mouths at the people below. How- 
ever, they thought they knew everything about 
tower building; and those who had heard what 
Neith said, told the rest; and they all flew 
down directly, chattering in German, like 
jackdaws, to show Neith's people what they 
could do. And they had found some of Neith's 
old work-people somewhere near Sais, sitting 
in the sun, with their hands on their knees; 
and abused them heartily: and Neith's people 
did not mind at first, but, after awhile, they 
seemed to get tired of the noise; and one or 
two rose up slowly, and laid hold of their meas- 
uring rods, and said, "If St. Barbara's people 
liked to build with them, tower against 



166 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

pyramid, they would show them how to lay 
stones." Then the Gothic little spirits threw 
a great many double somersaults for joy ; and 
put the tips of their tongues out slyly to each 
other, on one side ; and I heard the Egyptians 
say, "they must be some new kind of frog — 
they didn't think there was much building in 
them." However, the stiff old workers took 
their rods, as I said, and measured out a square 
space of sand; but as soon as the German 
spirits saw that, they declared they wanted 
exactly that bit of ground to build on them- 
selves. Then the Egyptian builders offered to 
go farther off, and the German ones said, "Ja 
wohl. " But as soon as the Egyptians had 
measured out another square, the little Ger- 
mans said they must have some of that too. 
Then Neith's people laughed; and said, "they 
might take as much as they liked, but they 
would not move the plan of their pyramid 
again." Then the little Germans took three 
pieces, and began to build three spires direct- 
ly; one large and two little. And when the 
Egyptians saw they had fairly begun, they laid 
their foundation all around, of large square 
stones: and began to build, so steadily that 
they had like to have swallowed up the three 
little German spires. So when the Gothic 
spirits saw that, they built their spires lean- 
ing, like the tower of Pisa, that they might 
stick out at the side of the pyramid. And 
Neith's people stared at them; and thought 
it very clever, but very wrong; and on they 
went, in their own way, and said nothing. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 167 

Then the little Gothic spirits were terribly 
provoked because they could not spoil the 
shape of the pyramid; and they sat down all 
along the ledges of it to make faces; but that 
did no good. Then they ran to the corners, 
and put their elbows on their knees, and stuck 
themselves out as far as they could, and made 
more faces; but that did no good, neither. 
Then they looked up to the sky, and opened 
their mouths wide, and gobbled, and said it 
was too hot for work, and wondered when it 
would rain; but that did no good, neither. 
And all the while the Egyptian spirits were 
laying step above step, patiently. But when 
the Gothic ones looked, and saw how high they 
had got, they said, "Ach, Himmel! ,, and flew 
down in a great black cluster to the bottom ; 
and swept out a level spot in the sand with 
their wings, in no time, and began building a 
tower straight up, as fast as they could. And 
the Egyptians stood still again to stare at them ; 
for the Gothic spirits had got quite into a 
passion, and were really working very wonder- 
fully. They cut the sandstone into strips as 
fine as reeds ; and put one reed on the top of 
another, so that you could not see where they 
fitted: and they twisted them in and out like 
basket work, and knotted them into likenesses 
of ugly faces, and of strange beasts biting 
each other; and up they went, and up still, 
and they made spiral staircases at the corners, 
for the loaded workers to come up by (for I 
saw they were but weak imps, and could not 
fly with stones on their backs), and then they 



168 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

made traceried galleries for them to run round 
by ; and so up again ; with finer and finer work, 
till the Egyptians wondered whether they 
meant the thing for a tower or a pillar: and I 
heard them saying to one another, "It was 
nearly as pretty as lotos stalks; and if it were 
not for the ugly faces there would be a fine 
temple, if they were going to build it all with 
pillars as big as that!" But in a minute after- 
wards, — just as the Gothic spirits had carried 
their work as high as the upper course, but 
three or four, of the pyramid — the Egyptians 
called out to them to "mind what they were 
about, for the sand was running away from 
under one of their tower corners. " But it was 
too late to mind what they were about ; for, in 
another instant, the whole tower sloped aside; 
and the Gothic imps rose out of it like a flight 
of puffins, in a single cloud; but screaming 
worse than any puffins you ever heard : and 
down came the tower, all in a piece, like a 
falling poplar, with its head right on the flank 
of the pyramid; against which it snapped 
short off. And of course that waked me! 

Mary. What a shame of you to have such a 
dream, after all you have told us about Gothic 
architecture ! 

L. If you have understood anything I ever 
told you about it, you know that no architec- 
ture was ever corrupted more miserably; or 
abolished more justly by the accomplishment 
of its own follies. Besides, even in its days of 
power, it was subject to catastrophes of this 
kind. I have stood too often, mourning, by 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 169 

the grand fragment of the apse of Beauvais, 
not to have that fact well burnt into me. 
Still, you must have seen, surely, that these 
imps were of the Flamboyant school; or, at 
least, of the German schools correspondent 
with it in extravagance. 

Mary. But, then, where is the crystal 
about which you dreamed all this? 

L. Here; but I suppose little Pthah has 
touched it again, for it is very small. But, you 
see, here is the pyramid, built of great square 
stones of fluor spar, straight up ; and here are 
the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, 
which have set themselves, at the same time, 
on the same foundation ; only they lean like 
the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at 
the side ; and here is one great spire of quartz 
which seems as if it had been meant to stand 
straight up, a little way off ; and then had fallen 
down against the pyramid base, breaking its 
pinnacle away. In reality, it has crystallized 
horizontally, and terminated imperfectly: but 
then, by what caprice does one crystal form hor- 
izontally, when all the rest stand upright? But 
this is nothing to the phantasies of fluor, and 
quartz, and some other such companions, when 
they get leave to do anything they like. I could 
show you fifty specimens, about every one of 
which you might fancy a new fairy tale. Not 
that, in truth, any crystals get leave to do 
quite what they like; and many of them are 
sadly tried, and have little time for caprices — 
poor things! 

Mary. I thought they always looked as if 



170 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

they were either in play or in mischief? What 
trials have they? 

L. Trials much like our own. Sickness, 
and starvation; fevers, and agues, and palsy; 
oppression ; and old age, and the necessity of 
passing away in their time, like all else. If 
there's any pity in you, you must come to-mor- 
row, and take some part in these crystal griefs. 

Dora. I am sure we shall cry till our eyes 
are red. 

L. Ah, you may laugh; Dora: but I've 
been made grave, not once, nor twice, to see 
that even crystals * 'cannot choose but be old" 
at last. It may be but a shallow proverb of 
the Justices's; but is a shrewdly wise one. 

Dora (pensive for once). I suppose it is very 
dreadful to be old! But then (brightening 
again), what should we do without our dear 
old friends, and our nice old lectures? 

L. If all nice old lectures were minded as 
little as one I know of — 

Dora. And if they all meant as little what 
they say, would they not deserve it? But 
we'll come, — we'll come, and cry. 



LECTURE IX. 
CRYSTAL SORROWS. 



171 



LECTURE IX. 

CRYSTAL SORROWS. 

Working Lecture in Schoolroom. 

L. We have been hitherto talking, children, 
as if crystals might live, and play, and quarrel, 
and behave ill or well, according to their 
characters without interruption from anything 
else. But so far from this being so, nearly all 
crystals, whatever their characters, have to 
live a hard life of it, and meet with many mis- 
fortunes. If we could see far enough, we 
should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their 
vices were misfortunes; but to-day I want you 
to see what sort of troubles the best crystals 
have to go through, occasionally, by no fault 
of their own. 

This black thing, which is one of the pretti- 
est of the very few pretty black things in the 
world, is called "Tourmaline." It may be 
transparent, and green, or red, as well as 
black ; and then no stone can be prettier (only, 
all the light that gets into it, I believe, comes 
out a good deal the worse; and is not itself 
again for a long while). But this is the com- 
monest state of it,— opaque, and as black as 
let. 

Mary. What does " Tourmaline" mean? 

L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don't 
173 



174 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

know Ceylanese; but we may always be thank- 
ful for a graceful word, whatever it means. 

Mary. And what is it made of? 

L, A little of everything; there's always 
flint, and clay, and magnesia in it; and the 
black is iron, according to its fancy; and 
there's boracic acid, if you know what that is; s 
and if you don't, I cannot tell you to-day; and 1 
it doesn't signify: and there's potash, andi 
soda; and, on the whole, the chemistry of it is"; 
more like a mediaeval doctor's prescription, - 
than the making of a respectable mineral : but 
it may, perhaps, be owing to the strange com- 
plexity of its make, that it has a notable habit 
which makes it, to me, one of the most inter- 
esting of minerals. You see these two crystals 
are broken right across, in many places, just 
as if they had been shafts of black marble fall- 
en from a ruinous temple ; and here they lie, 
imbedded in white quartz, fragment succeed- 
ing fragment, keeping the line of the original 
crystal, while the quartz fills up the interven- 
ing spaces. Now Tourmaline has a trick of 
doing this, more than any other mineral I. 
know; here is another bit which I picked up 
on the glacier of Macugnaga: it is broken, like 
a pillar built of very flat broad stones, into 
about thirty joints, and all these are heaved 
and warped away from each other sideways, 
almost into a line of steps; and then all is 
filled up with quartz paste. And here, lastly, 
is a green Indian piece, in which the pillar is 
first disjointed, and then wrung round into the 
shape of an S. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 175 

Mary. How can this have been done? 

L. There are a thousand ways in which it 
may have been done ; the difficulty is not to 
account for the doing of it; but for the show- 
ing of it in some crystals, and not in others. 
You never by any chance get a quartz crystal 
broken or twisted in this way. If it break or 
twist at all, which it does sometimes, like the 
spire of Dijon, it is by its own will or fault; it 
never seems to have been passively crushed. 
But, for the forces which cause this passive 
ruin of the tourmaline, — here is a stone which 
will show you multitudes of them in operation 
at once. It is known as "precciated agate,*' 
beautiful, as you see ; and highly valued as a 
pebble : yet, so far as I can read or hear, no 
one has ever looked at it with the least atten- 
tion. At the first glance, you see it is made of 
very fine red striped agates, which have been 
broken into small pieces, and fastened together 
again by paste, also of agate. There would be 
nothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It 
is well known that by the movements of strata, 
portions of rock are often shattered to pieces: 
— well known also that agate is a deposit of 
flint by water under certain conditions of 
heat and pressure : there is, therefore, nothing 
wonderful in an agate's being broken; and 
nothing wonderful in its being mended with 
the solution out of which it was itself originally 
congealed. And with this explanation most 
people looking at a brecciated agate, or brec- 
ciated anything, seem to be satisfied. I was so 
myself, for twenty years; but, lately happen- 



178 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

ing to stay for some time at the Swiss Baden, 
where the beach of the Limmat is almost 
wholly composed of brecciated limestones, I 
began to examine them thoroughly; and per- 
ceived, in the end, that they were, one and all, 
knots of as rich mystery as any poor little 
human brain was ever lost in. That piece of 
agate in your hand, Mary, will show you many 
of the common phenomena of breccias; but 
you need not knit your brows over it in that 
way ; depend upon it, neither you nor I shall 
ever know anything about the way it was 
made, as long as we live. 

Dora. That does not seem much to depend 
upon. 

L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain 
some real notion of the extent and unconquer- 
ableness of our ignorance, it is a very broad 
and restful thing to depend upon: you can 
throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a cloud to 
feast with the gods. You do not thenceforward 
trouble yourself, — nor any one else, — with 
theories, or the contradiction of theories; you 
neither get headache nor heart-burning; and 
you never more waste your poor little store of 
strength or allowance of time. 

However, there are certain facts, about this 
gate-making, which I can tell you ; and then 
you may look at it in a pleasant wonder as long 
as you like; pleasant wonder is no loss of time. 

First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow; 
it is slowly wrung, or ground, to pieces. You 
can only with extreme dimness conceive the 
force exerted on mountains in transitional 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 177 

states of movement. You have all read a little 
geology : and you know how coolly geologists 
talk of mountains being raised or depressed. 
They talk coolly of it, because they are accus- 
tomed to the fact ; but the very universality of 
the fact prevents us from ever conceiving dis- 
tinctly the conditions of force involved. You 
know I was living last year in Savoy; my 
house was on the back of a sloping mountain, 
v/hich rose gradually for two miles behind it; 
and then fell at once in a great precipice 
toward Geneva, going down three thousand 
feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now that 
whole group of cliffs had simply been torn 
away by sheer strength from the rocks below, 
as if the whole mass had been as soft as bis- 
cuit. Put four or five captains' biscuits on the 
floor, on the top of one another; and try to 
break them all in half, not by bending, but by 
holding one half down, and tearing the other 
halves straight up; — of course you will not be 
able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend 
the sort of force needed. Then, fancy each 
captains' biscuit a bed of rock, six or seven 
hundred feet thick ; and the whole mass torn 
straight through: and one half heaved up 
three thousand feet, grinding against the other 
as it rose, — and you will have some idea of the 
making of the Mont Saleve. 

May. But it must crush the rocks all to 
dust. 

L. No; for there is no room for dust. The 
pressure is too great ; probably the heat devel- 
oped also so great that the rock is made partly 

12 Ethics 



178 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

ductile ; but the worst of it is, that we never 
can see these parts of mountains in the state 
they were left in at the time of their elevation ; 
for it is precisely in these rents and disloca- 
tions that the crystalline power principally 
exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, 
and wherever the earth is torn, it heals and 
binds; nay, the torture and grieving of the 
earth seem necessary to bring out its full 
energy; for you only find the crystalline living 
powerfully in action, where the rents and faults 
are deep and many. 

Dora. If you please, sir, — would you tell us 
— what are "faults?" 

L. You never heard of such things? 

Dora. Never in all our lives. 

L. When a vein of rock, which is going on 
smoothly, is interrupted by another trouble- 
some little vein, which stops it, and puts it out 
so that it has to begin again in another place 
— that is called a fault. I always think it 
ought to be called the fault of the vein that 
interrupts it; but the miners always call it the 
fault of the vein that is interrupted. 

Dora. So it is, if it does not begin again 
where it left off. 

L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the 
business: but, whatever good-natured old 
lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, 
when they are once interrupted, of never ask- 
ing, "Where was I?" 

Dora. When the two halves of the dining- 
table came separate, yesterday, was that a 
"fault"? 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 179 

L. Yes; but not the table's. However, it 
is not a bad illustration, Dora. When beds of 
rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but 
remain at the same level, like the two halves 
of the table, it is not called a fault, but only a 
fissure ; but if one-half of the table be either 
tilted higher than the other, or pushed to the 
side, so that the two parts will not fit, it is a 
fault. You had better read the chapter on 
faults in Jukes's Geology; then you will know 
all about it. And this rent that I am telling 
you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, 
to which are owing the forms of the Alps, as, 
I believe, of all great mountain chains. 
Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of 
real magnificence, you will nearly always find 
it owing to some dislocation of this kind ; but 
the point of chief wonder to me is, the delicacy 
of the touch by which these gigantic rents 
have been apparently accomplished. Note, 
however, that we have no clear evidence, 
hitherto, of the time taken to produce any of 
them. We know that a change of temperature 
alters the position and the angles of the atoms 
of crystals, and also the entire bulk of rocks. 
We know that in all volcanic, and the greater 
part of all subterranean, action, temperatures 
are continually changing, and, therefore, 
masses of rock must be expanding or contract- 
ing, with infinite slowness, but with infinite 
force. This pressure must result in mechani- 
cal strain somewhere, both in their own sub- 
stance, and in that of the rocks surrounding 
them ; and we can form no conception of the 



180 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

result of irresistible pressure, applied so as to 
rend and raise, with imperceptible slowness of 
gradation, masses thousands of feet in thick- 
ness We want some experiments tried on 
masses of iron and stone; and w r e can't get 
them tried, because Christian creatures never 
will seriously and sufficiently spend money, 
except to find out the shortest way of killing 
each other. But, besides this slow kind of 
pressure, there is evidence of more or less sud- 
den violence, on the same terrific scale; and, 
through it all, the w T onder, as I said, is always 
to me the delicacy of touch. I cut a block of 
the Saleve limestone from the edge of one of 
the principal faults which have formed the 
precipice; it is a lovely compact limestone, 
and the fault itself is filled up with a red 
breccia, formed of the crushed fragments of 
the torn rock, cemented by a rich red crystal- 
line paste. I have had the piece I cut from it 
smoothed, and polished across the junction; 
here it is; and you may now pass your soft 
little fingers over the surface, without so much 
as feeling the place where a rock which all the 
hills of England might have been sunk in the 
body of, and not a summit seen, was torn 
asunder through that whole thickness, as a thin 
dress is torn when you tread upon it. (The 

audience examine the stone, and touch it tim- 
idly, but the matter remains inconceivable to 
them.) 

Mary (struck by the beauty of the stone). 
But this is almost marble? 

L. It is quite marble. And another singu- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 181 

lar point in the business, to my mind, is that 
these stones, which men have been cutting into 
slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament their 
principal buildings with, — and which, under 
the general name of "marble," have been the 
delight of the eyes, and the wealth of archi- 
tecture, among all civilized nations, — are pre- 
cisely those on which the signs and brands of 
these earth agonies have been chiefly struck ; 
and there is not a purple vein nor flaming zone 
in them, which is not the record of their 
ancient torture. What a boundless capacity 
for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in 
the human mind! Fancy reflective beings, 
who cut and polish stones for three thousand 
years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon 
them ; and educate themselves to an art at last 
(such as it is), of imitating these veins by dex- 
terous painting; and never a curious soul of 
them, all that while, asks, "What painted the 
rocks?" 

(The audience look dejected, and ashamed 
of themselves.) 

The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, 
through our lives; and it is only by pinching 
ourselves very hard that we ever come to see, 
or understand, anything. At least, it is not 
always we who pinch ourselves; sometimes 
other people pinch us; which I suppose is very 
good of them, — or other things, which I sup- 
pose is very proper of them. But it is a sad 
life ; made up chiefly of naps and pinches. 

(Some of the audience, on this, appearing to 



182 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

think that the others require pinching, the 
Lecturer changes the subject.) 

Now, however, for once, look at a piece of 
marble carefully, and think about it. You see 
this is one side of the fault; the other side is 
down or up, nobody knows where: but, on this 
side, you can trace the evidence of the drag- 
ging and tearing action. All along the edge 
of this marble, the ends of the fibers of the 
rock are torn, here an inch, and there half an 
inch, away from each other; and you see the 
exact places where they fitted, before they 
were torn separate : and you see the rents are 
now all filled up with the sanguine paste, full 
of the broken pieces of the rock; the paste 
itself seems to have been half-melted, and 
partly to have also melted the edge of the 
fragments it contains, and then to have crys- 
tallized with them, and round them. And the 
brecciated agate I first showed you contains 
exactly the same phenomena; a zoned crystal- 
lization going on amidst the cemented frag- 
ments, partly altering the structure of those 
fragments themselves, and subject to continual 
change, either in the intensity of its own 
power, or in the nature of the materials sub- 
mitted to it; — so that, at one time, gravity acts 
upon them, and disposes them in horizontal 
layers, or causes them to droop in stalactites; 
and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and 
the substances in solution are crystallized in 
bands of equal thickness on every side of the 
cell. It would require a course of lectures 
longer than these (I have a great mind — you 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 183 

have behaved so saucily — to stay and give 
them) to describe to you the phenomena of 
this kind, in agates and chalcedonies only; — 
nay, there is a single sarcophagus in the Brit- 
ish Museum, covered with grand sculpture of 
the eighteenth dynasty, which contains in 
magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers imbed- 
ded in porphyry), out of which it is hewn, 
material for the thought of years; and record- 
ed of the earth-sorrow of ages in comparison 
with the duration of which, the Egyptian 
letters tell us but the history of the evening 
and morning of a day. 

Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most 
of their past history; but all crystallization 
goes on under, and partly records circum- 
stances of this kind — circumstances of infinite 
variety, but always involving difficulty, inter- 
ruption, and change of condition at different 
times. Observe, first, you have the whole 
mass of the rock in motion, either contracting 
itself, and so gradually widening the cracks; 
or being compressed, and, thereby closing 
them, and crushing their edges; — and, if one 
part of its substance be softer, at the given 
temperature, than another, probably squeezing 
that softer substance out into the veins. Then 
the veins themselves, when the rock leaves 
them open by its contraction, act with various 
power of suction upon its substance ; — by capil- 
lary attraction when they are fine, — by that of 
pure vacuity when they are larger, or by 
changes in the constitution and condensation 
of the mixed gases with which they have been 



184 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

originally filled. Those gases themselves may 
be supplied in all variation of volume and 
power from below; or, slowly, by the decom- 
position of the rocks themselves; and, at 
changing temperatures, must exert relatively 
changing forces of decomposition and combi- 
nation on the walls of the veins they fill; while 
water, at every degree of heat and pressure 
(from beds of everlasting ice, alternate with 
cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, or 
white hot steam), congeals, and drips, and 
throbs, and thrills, from crag to crag; and 
breathes from pulse to pulse of foaming or 
fiery arteries, whose beating is felt through 
chains of the great islands of the Indian seas, 
as your own pulses lift your bracelets, and 
makes whole kingdoms of the world quiver in 
deadly earthquake, as if they were light as 
aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor little 
crystals have to live their lives, and mind 
their own affairs, in the midst of all this, as 
best they may. They are wonderfully like 
human creatures, — forget all that is going on 
if they don't see it, however dreadful; and 
never think what is to happen to-morrow. 
They are spiteful or loving, and indolent or 
painstaking, and orderly or licentious, with no 
thought whatever of the lava or the flood 
which may break over them any day; and 
evaporate them into air-bubbles, or wash them 
into a solution of salts. And you may look at 
them, once understanding the surrounding 
conditions of their fate, with an endless inter- 
est. You will see crowds of unfortunate little 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 185 

crystals, who have been forced to constitute 
themselves in a hurry, their dissolving element 
being fiercely scorched away; you will see 
them doing their best, bright and numberless, 
but tiny. Then you will find indulged crys- 
tals, who have had centuries to form them- 
selves in, and have changed their mind and 
ways continually; and have been tired, and 
taken heart again; and have been sick, and 
got well again; and thought they would try a 
different diet, and then thought better of it; 
and made but a poor use of their advantages, 
after all. And others you will see, who have 
begun life as wicked crystals; and then have 
been impressed by alarming circumstances, 
and have become converted crystals, and be- 
haved amazingly for a little while, and fallen 
away again> and ended, but discreditably, 
perhaps even in decomposition; so that one 
doesn't know what will become of them. And 
sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that 
look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to all 
near them ; and sometimes you will see deceit- 
ful crystals, that seem flint-edged, like our 
little quartz-crystal of .a housekeeper here 
(hush! Dora), and are endlessly gentle and 
true wherever gentleness and truth are needed. 
And sometimes you will see little child-crystals 
put to school like school-girls, and made to 
stand in rows; and taken the greatest care of, 
and taught how to hold themselves up, and 
behave: and sometimes you will see unhappy 
little child-crystals left to lie about in the dirt, 
and pick up their living, and learn manners 



186 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

where they can. And sometimes you will see 
fat crystals eating up thin ones, like great cap- 
italists and little laborers; and politico- 
economic crystals teaching the stupid ones 
how to eat each other, and cheat each other; 
and foolish crystals getting in the way of wise 
ones; and impatient crystals spoiling the plans 
of patient ones, irreparably; just as things go 
on in the world. And sometimes you may see 
hypocritical crystals taking the shape of others, 
though they are nothing like in their minds; 
and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of 
others ; and hermit-crab crystals living in the 
shells of others; and parasite crystals living 
on the means of others; and courtier crystals 
glittering in attendance upon others; and all 
these, besides the two great companies of war 
and peace, who ally themselves, resolutely to 
attack, or resolutely to defend. And for the 
close, you see the broad shadow and deadly 
force of inevitable fate, above all this; you see 
the multitudes of crystals whose time has 
come ; not a set time, as with us, but yet a 
time, sooner or later, when they all must give 
up their crystal ghosts : — when the strength by 
which they grew and the breath given them to 
breathe, pass away from them ; and they fail, 
and are consumed, and vanish away ; and an- 
other generation is brought to life, framed out 
of their ashes. 

Mary. It is very terrible. Is it not the 
complete fulfillment, down into the very dust, 
of that verse: "The whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain ,, ? 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 187 

L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary; 
at least, the evidence tends to show that there 
is much more pleasure than pain, as soon as 
sensation becomes possible. 

Lucilla. But then, surely, if we are told 
that it is pain, it must be pain? 

L. Yes; if we are told; and told in the way 
you mean, Lucilla; but nothing is said of the 
proportion to pleasure. Unmitigated pain 
would kill any of us in a few hours: pain equal 
to our pleasures would make us loathe life ; 
the word itself can not be applied to the lower 
conditions of matter in its ordinary sense. 
But wait till to-morrow to ask me about this. 
To-morrow is to be kept for questions and 
difficulties; let us keep to the plain facts to- 
day. There is yet one group of facts connect- 
ed with this rending of the rocks, which I 
especially want you to notice. You know, 
when you have mended a very old dress, quite 
meritoriously, till it won't mend any more 

Egypt (interrupting). Could not you some- 
times take gentlemen's work to illustrate by? 

L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as 
yours, Egypt; and when it is useful, girls can 
not easily understand it. 

Dora. I am sure we should understand it 
better than gentlemen understand about sew- 
ing. 

L. My dear, I hope I always speak modest- 
ly, and under correction, when I touch upon 
matters of the kind too high for me; and, 
besides, I never intend to speak otherwise than 
respectfully of sewing; — though you always 



188 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

seem to think I am laughing at you. In all 
seriousness, illustrations from sewing are those 
which Neith likes me best to use; and which 
young ladies ought to like everybody to use. 
What do you think the beautiful word "wife" 
comes from? 

Dora (tossing her head). I don't think it is 
a particularly beautiful word. 

L, Perhaps not. At your ages you may 
think ' 'bride" sounds better; but wife's the 
word for wear, depend upon it. It is the great 
word in which the English and Latin lan- 
guages conquer the French and the Greek. I 
hope the French will some day get a word for 
it, yet, instead of their dreadful "femme." 
But what do you think it comes from? 

Dora. I never did think about it. 

L. Nor you, Sibyl? 

Sibyl. No; I thought it was Saxon, and 
stopped there. 

L. Yes ; but the great good of Saxon words 
is, that they usually do mean something. Wife 
means "'weaver. " You have all the right to 
call yourselves little "housewives/' when you 
sew neatly. 

Dora. But I don't think we want to call 
ourselves "little housewives." 

L. You must either be house-Wives, or 
house-Moths, remember that. In the deep 
sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, 
and embroider them; or feed upon, and bring 
them to decay. You had better let me keep 
my sewing illustration, and help me out with 
it. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 189 

Dora. Well, we'll hear it, under protest. 

L. You have heard it before; but with 
reference to other matters. When it is said, 
"No man putteth a piece of new cloth on an 
old garment, else it taketh from the old/' does 
it not mean that the new piece tears the old 
one away at the sewn edge? 

Dora. Yes; certainly. 

L. And when you mend a decayed stuff 
with strong thread, does not the whole edge 
come away sometimes, when it tears again? 

Dora. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend 
it any more. 

L. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that: 
but the same thing happens to them continu- 
ally. I told you they were full of rents, or 
veins. Large masses of mountain are some- 
times as full of veins as your hand is; and of 
veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein 
does not mean a tube, but a crack or cleft). 
Now these clefts are mended, usualh r , with the 
strongest material the rock can find ; and often 
literally with threads; for the gradually open- 
ing rent seems to draw the substance it is 
filled with into fibers, which cross from one 
side of it to the other, and are partly crystal- 
line ; so that when the crystals become distinct, 
the fissure has often exactly the look of a tear, 
brought together with strong cross stitches. 
Now when this is completely done, and all has 
been fastened and made firm, perhaps some 
new change of temperature may occur and the 
rock begin to contract again. Then the old 
vein must open wider; or else another open 



190 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it may do 
so at its center; but it constantly happens, with 
well filled veins, that the cross stitches are too 
strong to break; the walls of the vein, instead, 
are torn away by them: and another little sup- 
plementary vein — often three or four succes- 
sively — will be thus formed at the side of the 
first. 

Mary. That is really very much like our 
work. But what do the mountains use to sew 
with? 

L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure 
limestones are obliged to be content with car- 
bonate of lime ; but most mixed rocks can find 
some quartz for themselves. Here is a piece 
of black slate from the Buet: it looks merely 
like dry dark mud ; you could not think there 
was any quartz in it ; but, you see, its rents 
are all stitched together with beautiful white 
thread, which is the purest quartz, so close 
drawn that you can break it like flint, in the 
mass; but, where it has been exposed to the 
weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown : 
and, more than that, you see the threads have 
been all twisted and pulled aside, this way and 
the other, by the warpings and shifting of th6 
sides of the vein as it widened. 

Mary. It is wonderful ! But is that going 
on still? Are the mountains being torn and 
sewn together again at this moment? 

L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, 
just as certainly (though geologists differ on 
this matter), not with the violence, or on the 
scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 191 

All things seem to be tending towards a con- 
dition of at least temporary rest; and that 
groaning and travailing of the creation, as, 
assuredly, not wholly in pain, is not, in the 
full sense, "until now." 

Mary. I want so much to ask you about 
that! 

Sibyl. Yes; and we all want to ask you 
about a great many other things besides. 

L. It seems to me that you have got quite 
as many new ideas as are good for any of you 
at present; and I should not like to burden 
you with more ; but I must see that those you 
have are clear, if I can make them so; so we 
will have one more talk, for answer of ques- 
tions, mainly. Think over all the ground, and 
make your difficulties thoroughly presentable. 
Then we'll see what we can make of them. 

Dora. They shall all be dressed in their 
very best; and curtsey as they come in. 

L. No, no, Dora ; no curtseys, if you please. 
I had enough of them the day you all took a 
fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the 
room. 

Dora. But, you know, we cured ourselves 
of the fault, at once, by that fit. We have 
never been the least respectful since. And 
the difficulties will only curtsey themselves out 
of the room, I hope ; — come in at one door — 
vanish at the other. 

L. What a pleasant world it would be, if 
all its difficulties were taught to behave so! 
However, one can generally make something, 
or (better still) nothing, or at least, less of 



192 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

them, if they thoroughly know their own 
minds; and your difficulties — I must say that 
for you, children, — generally do know their 
own minds, as you do yourselves. 

Dora. That is very kindly said for us. 
Some people would not allow so much as that 
girls had any minds to know. 

L. They will at least admit that you have 
minds to change, Dora. 

Mary. You might have left us the last 
speech, without a retouch. But we'll put our 
little minds, such as they are, in the best trim 
we can, for to-morrow. 



LECTURE X. 
THE CRYSTAL REST. 



193 

13 Ethics 



LECTURE X. 

THE CRYSTAL REST. 

Evening. The fireside. L. 's arm-chair in the 
comfortable corner. 

L. (perceiving various arrangements being 
made of footstool, cushion, screen, and the 
like). Yes, yes, it's all very fine! and I am 
to sit here to be asked questions till supper- 
time, am I? 

Dora. I don't think you can have any sup- 
per to-night: — we've got so much to ask. 

Lily. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it 
him here, you know, so nicely! 

L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with 
competitive examination going on over one's 
plate : the competition being among the exam- 
iners. Really, now that I know what teasing 
things girls are, I don't so much wonder that 
people used to put up patiently with the 
dragons who took them for supper. But I 
can't help myself, I suppose; — no thanks to 
St. George. Ask away, children, and I'll an- 
swer as civilly as may be. 

Dora. We don't so much care about being 
answered civilly, as about not being asked 
things back again. 

L. "Ayez seulement la patience que je le 
parle. " There shall be no requitals. 

195 



196 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

Dora. Well, then, first of all— What shall 
we ask first, Mary? 

Mary. It does not matter. I think all the 
questions come into one, at least, nearly. 

Dora. You know, you always talk as if the 
crystals were alive; and we never understand 
how much you are in play, and how much in 
earnest. That's the first thing. 

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my 
dear, how much I am in earnest. The stones 
puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. 

They look as if they were alive, and make 
me speak as if they were ; and I do not in the 
least know how much truth there is in the 
appearance. I'm not to ask things back again 
to-night, but all questions of this sort lead 
necessarily to the one main question, which we 
asked, before, in vain, *' What is it to be alive?" 

Dora. Yes; but we want to come back to 
that: for we've been reading scientific books 
about the "conservation of forces," and it 
seems all so grand, and wonderful; and the 
experiments are so pretty; and I suppose it 
must be all right: but then the books never 
speak as if there were any such thing as 
44 life." 

L. They mostly omit that part of the sub- 
ject, certainly, Dora; but they are beautifully 
right as far as they go; and life is not a con- 
venient element to deal with. They seem to 
have been getting some of it into and out of 
bottles, in their "ozone" and "antizone" 
lately; but they still know little of it: and, 
certainly, I know less. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 197 

Dora. You promised not to be provoking, 
to-night. 

L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, 
T know less of the secrets of life than the 
philosophers do; I yet know one corner of 
ground on which we artists can stand, literally 
as "Life Guards" at bay, as steadily as the 
Guards at Inkermann; however hard the 
philosophers push. And you may stand with 
us, if once you learn to draw nicely. 

Dora. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell 
us where we may stand. 

L. You may always stand by Form, against 
Force. To a painter, the essential character 
of anything is the form of it, and the philoso- 
phers cannot touch that. They come and tell 
you, for instance, that there is as much heat, 
or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever 
else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle as in a 
Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so; and it is 
very interesting. It requires just as much 
heat as will boil the kettle, to take the Gier- 
eagle up to his nest; and as much more to 
bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. 
But we painters, acknowledging the equality 
and similarity of the kettle and the bird in all 
scientific respects, attach, for our part, our 
principal interest to the difference in their 
forms. For us, the primary cognizable facts, 
in the two things, are, that the kettle has a 
spout, and the eagle a beak ; the one a lid on 
its back, and the other a pair of wings; — not 
to speak of the distinction also of volition, 
which the philosophers may properly call 



198 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

merely a form, or mode of force; — but then, 
to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of 
the business. The kettle chooses to sit still 
on the hob ; the eagle to recline on the air. 
It is the fact of the choice, not the equal de- 
gree of temperature in the fulfillment of it, 
which appears to us the more interesting cir- 
cumstance ; — though the other is very inter- 
esting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh, 
children ; the philosophers have been doing 
quite splendid work lately, in their own way: 
especially, the transformation of force into 
light is a great piece of systematized discov- 
ery; and this notion about the sun's being 
supplied with his flame by ceaseless meteoric 
hail is grand, and looks very likely to be true. 
Of course, it is only the old gunlock, — flint 
and steel, — on a large scale: but the order and 
majesty of it are sublime. Still, we sculptors 
and painters care little about it. "It is very 
fine," we say, "and very useful, this knocking 
the light out of the sun, or into it, by an 
eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail 
away, so, forever, and you will not knock out 
what we can. Here is a bit of silver, not the 
size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single 
hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and 
odd years ago, hit out the head of the Apollo 
of Clazomense. It is merely a matter of form ; 
but if any of you philosophers, with your 
whole planetary system to hammer with, can 
hit out such another bit of silver as this — we 
will take off our hats to you. For the pres- 
ent, we keep them on." 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 199 

Mary. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; 
but I don't think we shall any of us like hav- 
ing only form to depend upon. 

L. It was not neglected in the making of 
Eve, my dear. 

Mary. It does not seem to separate us 
from the dust of the ground. It is that 
breathing of the life which we want to under- 
stand. 

L. So you should: but hold fast to the 
form, and defend that first, as distinguished 
from the mere transition of forces. Discern 
the moulding hand of the potter commanding 
the clay, from his merely beating foot, as it 
turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in 
the vase, afterwards, — well: but it is curious 
how far mere form will carry you ahead of the 
philosophers. For instance, with regard to 
the most interesting of all their modes of force 
— light; — they never consider how far the ex- 
istence of it depends on the putting of certain 
vitreous and nervous substances into the for- 
mal arrangement which we call an eye. The 
German philosophers began the attack, long 
ago, on the other side, by telling us, there was 
no such thing as light at all, unless we chose 
to see it: now, German and English, both, 
have reversed their engines, and insist that 
light would be exactly the same light that it 
is, though nobody could ever see it. The fact 
being that the force must be there, and the eyes 
there; and "light" means the effect of the one 
on the other; — and perhaps, also — (Plato saw 
farther into that mystery than any one has 



200 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

since, that I know of), — on something a little 
way within the eyes; but we may stand quite 
safe, close behind the retina, and defy the 
philosophers. 

Sibyl. But I don't care so much about de- 
fying the philosophers, if only one could get a 
clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self. 

L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more 
about it, in that cave of yours, than any of us. 
I was just going to ask you about inspiration, 
and the golden bough, and the like: only I 
remembered I was not to ask anything. But, 
will not you, at least, tell us whether the 
ideas of Life, as the power of putting things 
together, or "making" them; and of Death, 
as the power of pushing things separate, or 
"unmaking" them, may not be very simply 
held in balance against each other? 

Sibyl. No, I am not in my cave to-night; 
and cannot tell you anything. 

L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy 
is a great separator; it is little more than the 
expansion of Moliere's great sentence, "II 
s'ensuit de la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau 
est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y a que les mots 
qui sont transposes." But when you used to 
be in your cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, 
there was (and there remains still in some 
small measure), beyond the merely formative 
and sustaining power, another, which we 
painters call "passion" — I don't know what 
the philosophers call it; we know it makes 
people red, or white ; and therefore it must 
be something, itself; and perhaps it is the most 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 201 

truly il poetic" or ' 'making" force of all, 
creating a world of its own out of a glance, 
or a sigh : and the want of passion is perhaps 
the truest death, or ' 'unmaking" of every- 
thing; — even of stones. By the way, you were 
all reading about that ascent of the Aiguille 
Verte, the other day? 

Sibyl. Because you had told us it was so diffi- 
cult, you thought it could not be ascended. 

L. Yes; I believed the Aiguille Verte would 
have held its own. But do you recollect what 
one of the climbers exclaimed, when he first 
felt sure of reaching the summit? 

Sibyl. Yes, it was, " Qh, Aiguille Verte ', vous 
etes morte, vous etes morte!" 

L. That was true instinct. Real philoso- 
phic joy. Now can you at all fancy the differ- 
ence between that feeling of triumph in a 
mountain's death; and the exultation of your 
beloved poet, in its life — 

"Quantus Athos, aut quantus Eryx, aut ipse coruscis 
Quum f remit ilicibus quantus, gaudetque nivali 
Vertice, se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras." 

Dora. You must translate for us mere 
housekeepers, please — whatever the cave- 
keepers may know about it. 

Mary. Will Dryden do? 

L. No. Dryden is a far way worse than 
nothing, and nobody will "do. " You can't 
translate it. But this is all you need know, 
that the lines are full of a passionate sense of 
the Apennines' fatherhood, or protecting power 
over Italy; and of sympathy with their joy in 



202 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

their snowy strength in heaven; and with the 
same joy, shuddering through all the leaves of 
their forests. 

Mary. Yes, that is a difference, indeed! 
but then, you know, one can't help feeling 
that it is fanciful. It is very delightful to 
imagine the mountains to be alive; but then, 
— are they alive? 

L. It seems to me, on the whole, Mary, 
that the feelings of the purest and most 
mightily passioned human souls are likely to 
be the truest. Not, indeed, if they do not de- 
sire to know the truth, or blind themselves to 
it that they may please themselves with pas- 
sion ; for then they are no longer pure : but if, 
continually seeking and accepting the truth as 
far as it is discernible, they trust their Maker 
for the integrity of the instincts He has gifted 
them with, and rest in the sense of a higher 
truth which they cannot demonstrate, I think 
they will be most in the right, so. 

Dora and Jessie (clapping their hands). 
Then we really may believe that the mountains 
are living? 

L. You may at least earnestly believe that 
the presence of the spirit which culminates in 
your own life, shows itself in dawning, 
wherever the dust of the earth begins to 
assume any orderly and lovely state. You 
will find it impossible to separate this idea of 
graduated manifestation from that of the vital 
power. Things are not either wholly alive, or 
wholly dead. They are less or more alive. 
Take the nearest, most easily examined in- 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 203 

stance — the life of a flower. Notice what a 
different degree and kind of life there is in the 
calyx and the corolla. The calyx is nothing 
but the swaddling clothes of the flower; the 
child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and foot; 
guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of 
birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate 
to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the 
blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives 
as the corolla does. It may fall at the mo- 
ment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or 
whether gradually, as in the buttercup; or 
persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower 
is dead, as in the rose ; or harmonize itself so 
as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as 
in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's 
bright passion of life. And the gradations 
which thus exist between the different mem- 
bers of organic creatures, exist no less between 
the- different ranges of organism. We know no 
higher or more energetic life than our own ; 
but there seems to me this great good in the 
idea of a gradation of life — it admits the idea 
of a life above us, in other creatures, as much 
nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that of 
the dust. 

Mary. I am glad you have said that; for I 
know Violet and Lucilla and May want to ask 
you something; indeed, we all do; only you 
frightened Violet so about the ant-hill, that she 
can't say a word; and May is afraid of your 
teasing her, too: but I know they are wonder- 
ing why you are always telling them about 
heathen gods and goddesses, as if you half be- 



204 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

lieved in them; and you represent them as 
good ; and then we see there is really a kind 
of truth in the stories about them ; and we are 
all puzzled: and, in this, we cannot even make 
our difficulty quite clear to ourselves; — it 
would be such a long confused question, if we 
could ask you all we should like to know. 

L. Nor is it any wonder, Mary; for this 
is indeed the longest, and the most wildly con- 
fused question that reason can deal with ; but 
I will try to give you, quickly a few clear ideas 
about the heathen gods, which you may follow 
out afterwards, as your knowledge increases. 

Every heathen conception of deity, in which 
you are likely to be interested, has three dis- 
tinct characters: — 

I. It has a physical character. It represents 
some of the great powers or objects of nature 
— sun or moon, or heaven, or the winds, or the 
sea. And the fables first related about each 
deity represent, figuratively, the action or the 
natural power which it represents ; such as the 
rising and setting of the sun, the tides of the 
sea, and so on. 

II. It has an ethical character, and repre- 
sents, in its history, the moral dealings of God 
with man. Thus Apollo is first, physically, the 
sun contending with darkness; but morally, 
the power of divine life contending with cor- 
ruption. Athena is, physically, the air; 
morally, the breathing of the divine spirit of 
wisdom. Neptune is, physically, the sea; 
morally, the supreme power of agitating pas- 
sion ; and so on. 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 205 

III. It has, at last, a personal character; 
and is realized in the minds of its worshipers 
as a living spirit, with whom men may speak 
face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. 

Now it is impossible to define exactly, how 
far, at any period of a national religion, these 
three ideas are mingled; or how far one pre- 
vails upon the other. Each inquirer usually 
takes up one of these ideas, and pursues it, to 
the exclusion of the others; no impartial 
effort seems to have been made to discern the 
real state of the heathen imagination in its 
successive phases. For the question is not at 
all what a mythological figure meant in its 
origin; but what it became in each subsequent 
mental development of the nation inheriting 
the thought. Exactly in proportion to the 
mental and moral insight of any race, its myth- 
ological figures mean more to it, and become 
more real. An early and savage race means 
nothing more (because it has nothing more to 
mean) by its Apollo, than the sun; while a 
cultivated Greek means every operation of 
divine intellect and justice. The Neith, of 
Egypt, meant, physically, little more than 
the blue of the air; but the Greek, in a climate 
of alternate storm and calm, represented the 
wild fringes of the storm-cloud by the ser- 
pents of her aegis; and the lightning and cold 
of the highest thunder-clouds, by the Gorgon 
on her shield: when morally, the same types 
represented to him the mystery and changeful 
terror of knowledge, as her spear and helm its 
ruling and defensive power. And no study can 



206 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

be more interesting, or more useful to you, 
than that of the different meanings which 
have been created by great nations, and great 
poets, out of mythological figures given them, 
first, in utter simplicity. But when we ap- 
proach them in their third, or personal, charac- 
ter (and, for its power over the whole national 
mind, this is far the leading one), we are met 
at once by questions which may well put all of 
you at pause. Were they idly imagined to be 
real beings? and did they so usurp the place 
of the true God? Or were they actually real 
beings, — evil spirits, — leading men away from 
the true God? Or is it Conceivable that they 
might have been real beings, — good spirits, — 
entrusted with some message from the true 
God? These were the questions you wanted 
to ask; were they not, Lucilla? 

Lucilla. Yes, indeed. 

L. Well, Lucilla, the answer will much 
depend upon the clearness of your faith in the 
personality of the spirits which are described 
in the book of your own religion; — their per- 
sonality, observe, as distinguished from merely 
symbolical visions. For instance, when Jere- 
miah has the vision of the seething pot with its 
mouth to the north, you know that this which 
he sees is not a real thing; but merely a sig- 
nificant dream. Also, when Zechariah sees the 
speckled horses among the myrtle-trees in the 
bottom, you still may suppose the vision sym- 
bolical; — you do not think of them as real 
spirits, like Pegasus, seen in the form of 
horses. But when you are told of the four 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 207 

riders in the Apocalypse, a distinct sense of 
personality begins to force itself upon you. 
And though you might, in a dull temper, 
think that (for one instance of all) the fourth 
rider on the pale horse was merely a symbol 
of the power of death, — in your stronger and 
more earnest moods you will rather conceive 
of him as a real and living angel. And when 
you look back from the vision of the Apoca- 
lypse to the account of the destruction of the 
Egyptian first-born, and of the army of Sen- 
nacherib, and again to David's vision at the 
threshing floor of Araunah, the idea of person- 
ality in this death-angel becomes entirely 
defined, just as in the appearance of the 
angels to Abraham, Manoah, or Mary. 

Now, when you have once consented to this 
idea of a personal spirit, must not the ques- 
tion instantly follow : 4 ' Does this spirit exercise 
its functions toward one race of men only, or 
toward all men? Was it an angel of death to 
the Jew only, or to the Gentile also?" You 
find a certain Divine agency made visible to a 
King of Israel, as an armed angel, executing 
vengeance, of which one special purpose was 
to lower his kingly pride. You find another 
(or perhaps the same) agency, made visible to 
a Christian prophet as an angel standing in 
the sun, calling to the birds that fly under 
heaven to come, that they may eat the flesh of 
kings. Is there anything more impious in the 
thought that the same agency might have been 
expressed to a Greek king, or Greek seer, by 
similar visions? — that this figure standing in 



208 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

the sun, and armed with a sword, or the bow 
(whose arrows were drunk with blood), and 
exercising especially its power in the humilia- 
tion of the proud, might, at first, have been 
called only tc Destroyer," and afterward, as the 
light, or sun, of justice, was recognized in the 
chastisement, called also "Physician" or 
"Healer"? ££ yon reel hesitation in admitting 
the possibility of such a manifestation, I 
believe yot: wiffi find it is caused, partly indeed 
by such trivial things as the difference to your 
ear between Greek and English terms; but, 
far more, by uncertainty in your own mind 
respecting the nature and truth of the visions 
spoken of in the Bible. Have any of you in- 
tently examined the nature of your belief in 
them? You, for instance, Lucilla, who think 
often, and seriously, of such things? 

Lucilla. No; I never could tell what to 
believe about them. I know they must be true 
in some way or other; and I like reading 
about them. 

L. Yes; and I like reading about them too, 
Lucilla; as I like reading other grand poetry. 
But, surely, we ought both to do more than 
like it. Will God be satisfied with us, think 
you, if we read His words, merely for the sake 
of an entirely meaningless poetical sensation? 

Lucilla, But do not the people who give 
themselves to seek out the meaning of these 
things, often get very strange, and extrava- 
gant? 

L. More than that, Lucilla. They often 
go mad. That abandonment of the mind to 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 209 

religious theory, or contemplation, is the very- 
thing I have been pleading with you against. 
I never said you should set yourself to discover 
the meanings: but you should take careful 
pains to understand them, so far as they are 
clear ; and you should always accurately ascer- 
tain the state of your mind about them. I 
want you never to read merely for the pleasure 
of fancy ; still less as a formal religious duty 
(else you might as well take to repeating 
Paters at once ; for it is surely wiser to repeat 
one thing we understand, than read a thousand 
which we cannot). Either, therefore, acknowl- 
edge the passage to be, for the present, unintel- 
ligible to you; or else determine the sense in 
which you at present receive them ; or, at all 
events, the different senses between which 
you clearly see that you must choose. Make 
either your belief or your difficulty definite; 
but do not go on, all through your life, believ- 
ing nothing intelligently, and yet supposing 
that your having read the words of a divine 
book must give you the right to despise ever)?- 
religion but your own. I assure you, strange 
as it may seem, our scorn of Greek tradition 
depends, not on our belief, but our disbelief, 
of our own traditions. We have, as 5^et, no 
sufficient clue to the meaning of either; but 
you will always find that, in proportion to the 
earnestness of our own faith, its tendency to 
accept a spiritual personality increases: and 
that the most vital and beautiful Christian 
temper rests joyfully in its conviction of the 
multitudinous ministry of living angels, infin- 

14 Ethics 



210 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

itely varied in rank and power. You all know 
one expression of the purest and happiest 
form of such faith, as it exists in modern times, 
in Richter's lovely illustrations of the Lord's 
Prayer. The real and living death-angel, girt 
as a pilgrim for journey, and softly crowned 
with flowers, beckons at the dying mother's 
door; child angels sit talking face to face with 
mortal children, among the flowers ; — hold 
them by their little coats, lest they fall on the 
stairs; whisper dreams of heaven to them, 
leaning over their pillows; carry the sound of 
the church bells for them far through the air; 
and even descending lower in service, fill little 
cups with honey, to hold out to the weary bee. 
By the way, Lily, did you tell the other 
children that story about your little sister, and 
Alice, and the sea? 

Lily, I told it to Alice, and to Miss Dora. 
I don't think I did to anybody else. I thought 
it wasn't worth. 

L. We shall think it worth a great deal 
now, Lily, if you will tell it us. How old is 
Dotty, again? I forget. 

Lily. She is not quite three; but she has 
such odd little old ways, sometimes. 

L. And she was very fond of Alice? 

Lily. Yes ; Alice was so good to her always ! 

L. And so when Alice went away? 

Lily. Oh, it was nothing, you know, to tell 
about; only it was strange at the time. 

L. Well ; but I want you to tell it. 

Lily. The morning after Alice had gone, 
Dotty was very sad and restless when she got 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 211 

up; and went about, looking* into all the 
corners, as if she could find Alice in them, and 
at last she came to me, and said, "Is Alie gone 
over the great sea?" And I said, "Yes, she 
is gone over the great deep sea, but she will 
come back again some day." Then Dotty- 
looked round the room; and I had just poured 
some water out into the basin ; and Dotty ran 
to it, and got up on a chair, and dashed her 
hands through the water, again and again; 
and cried, "Oh, deep, deep sea! send little 
Alie back to me." 

L. Isn't that pretty, children? There's a 
dear little heathen for you! The whole heart 
of Greek mythology is in that ; the idea of a 
personal being in the elemental power; — of its 
being moved by prayer; — and of its presence 
everywhere, making the broken diffusion of 
the element sacred. 

Now, remember, the measure in which we 
may permit ourselves to think of this trusted 
and adored personality, in Greek, or in any 
other mythology, as conceivably a shadow of 
truth, will depend on the degree in which we 
hold the Greeks, or other great nations, equal, 
or inferior, in privilege and character, to the 
Jews, or to ourselves. If we believe that the 
great Father would use the imagination of the 
Jew as an instrument by which to exalt and 
lead him; but the imagination of the Greek 
only to degrade and mislead him: if we can 
suppose that real angels were sent to minister 
to the Jews and to punish them ; but no angels, 
or only mocking spectra of angels, or even 



212 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

devils in the shapes of angels, to lead Lycurgus 
and Leonidas from desolate cradle to hopeless 
grave: — and if we can think that it was only 
the influence of specters, or the teaching of 
demons, which issued in the making of mothers 
like Cornelia, and of sons like Cleobis and Bito, 
we may, of course, reject the heathen Mythol- 
ogy in our privileged scorn; but, at least, we 
are bound to examine strictly by what faults of 
our own it has come to pass, that the ministry 
of real angels among ourselves is occasionally 
so ineffectual as to end in the production of 
Cornelias who entrust their child-jewels to 
Charlotte Windsors for the better keeping of 
them; and of sons like that one who, the other 
day, in France, beat his mother to death with 
a stick; and was brought in by the jury, 
"guilty, with extenuating circumstances." 

May. Was that really possible. 

L. Yes, my dear. I am not sure that I can 
lay my hand on the reference to it (and I 
should not have said "the other day," — it was 
a year or two ago), but you may depend on the 
fact; and I could give you many like it, if I 
chose. There was a murder done in Prussia, 
very lately, on a traveler. The murderess' 
little daughter was in the way, and found it 
out, somehow. Her mother killed her, too, 
and put her into the oven. There is a peculiar 
horror about the relations between parent and 
child, which are being now brought about by 
our variously degraded forms of European 
white slavery. Here is one reference, I see, 
in my notes on that story of Cleobis and Bito; 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 213 

though I suppose I marked this chiefly for its 
quaintness and the beautifully Christian names 
of the sons; but it is a good instance of the 
power of the King of the Valley of Diamonds 
among us. 

In "Galignani," of July 21-22, 1862, is re- 
ported a trial of a farmer's son in the depart- 
ment of the Yonne. The father, two years 
ago, at Malay le Grand, gave up his property 
to his tw T o sons, on condition of being main- 
tained by them. Simon fulfilled his agree- 
ment, but Pierre would not. The tribunal of 
Sens condemns Pierre to pay eighty-four 
francs a year to his father. Pierre replies, 
''he would rather die than pay it." Actually, 
returning home, he throws himself into the 
river, and the body is not found till next day. 

Mary. But — but — I can't tell what you 
would have us think. .Do you seriously mean 
that the Greeks were better than we are ; and 
that their gods were real angels? 

L. No, my dear. I mean only that we 
know, in reality, less than nothing of the 
dealings of our Maker with our fellow-men; 
and can only reason or conjecture safely about 
them, when we have sincerely humble thoughts 
of ourselves and our creeds. 

We owe to the Greeks every noble discipline 
in literature, every radical principle of art; 
and every form of convenient beauty in our 
household furniture and daily occupations of 
life. We are unable, ourselves, to make 
rational use of half that we have received from 
them : and, of our own, we have nothing but 



214 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

discoveries in science, and fine mechanical 
adaptations of the discovered physical powers. 
On the other hand, the vice existing among 
certain classes, both of the rich and poor, in 
London, Paris, and Vienna, could have been 
conceived by a Spartan or Roman of the heroic 
ages only as possible in a Tartarus, where 
fiends were employed to teach, but not to 
punish, crime. It little becomes us to speak 
contemptuously of the religion of races to 
whom we stand in such relations; nor do I 
think any man of modesty or thoughtfulness 
will ever speak so of any religion, in which 
God has allowed one good man to die, trust- 
ing. 

The more readily we admit the possibility of 
our own cherished convictions being mixed 
with error, the more vital and helpful what- 
ever is right in them will become: and no 
error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that 
God will not allow us to err, though He has 
allowed all other men to do so. There may 
be doubt of the meaning of other visions, but 
there is none respecting that of the dream of St. 
Peter; and you may trust the Rock of the 
Church's Foundation for true interpreting, 
when he learned from it that, "in every nation, 
he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, 
is accepted with Him." See that you under- 
stand what that righteousness means; and set 
hand to it stoutly: you will always measure 
your neighbors' creed kindly, in proportion to 
the substantial fruits of your own. Do not 
think you will ever get harm by striving to 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 215 

enter into the faith of others, and to sympa- 
thize, in imagination, with the guiding princi- 
ples of their lives. So only can you justly love 
them, or pity them, or praise. By the 
gracious efforts you will double, treble — nay, 
indefinitely multiply, at once the pleasure, the 
reverence, and the intelligence with which 
you read: and, believe me, it is wiser and 
holier, by the fire of your own faith, to kindle 
the ashes of expired religions, than to let your 
soul shiver and stumble among their graves, 
through the gathering darkness, and commu- 
nicable cold. 

Mary (after some pause). We shall all like 
reading Greek history so much better after 
this! but it has put everything else out of our 
heads that we wanted to ask. 

L. I can tell you one of the things; and I 
might take credit for generosity in telling you: 
but I have a personal reason — Lucilla's verse 
about the creation. 

Dora. Oh, yes — yes; and its 4 * pain together, 
until now." 

L. I call you back to that, because I must 
warn you against an old error of my own. 
Somewhere in the fourth volume of "Modern 
Painters/' I said that the earth seemed to have 
passed through its highest state: and that, af- 
ter ascending by a series of phases, culminating 
in its habitation by man, it seems to be now 
gradually becoming less fit for that habita- 
tion. 

Mary. Yes, I remember. 

L. I wrote those passages under a very 



216 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

bitter impression of the gradual perishing of 
beauty from the loveliest scenes which I knew 
in the physical world; — not in any doubtful 
way, such as I might have attributed to loss 
of sensation in myself— but by violent and 
definite physical action ; such as the filling up 
of the Lac de Chede by landslips from the 
Rochers des Fiz ; — the narrowing of the Lake 
Lucerne by the gaining delta of the stream of 
the Muotta-Thal, which, in the course of years, 
will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz 
has been divided from that of Thun;— the 
steady diminishing of the glaciers north of the 
Alps, and still more, of the sheets of snow on 
their southern slopes, which supply the refresh- 
ing streams of Lombardy : — the equally steady 
increase of deadly maremma round Pisa and 
Venice; and other such phenomena, quite 
measurably traceable within the limits even of 
short life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, 
by redeeming or compensatory agencies. I 
am still under the same impression respecting 
the existing phenomena; but I feel more 
strongly, every day, that no evidence to be 
collected within historical periods can be ac- 
cepted as any clew to the great tendencies of 
geological change; but that the great laws 
which never fail, and to which all change is 
subordinate, appear such as to accomplish a 
gradual advance to lovelier order, and more 
calmly, yet more deeply, animated Rest. Nor 
has this conviction ever fastened itself upon 
me more distinctly, than during my endeavor 
to trace the laws which govern the lowly 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 217 

framework of the dust. For, through all the 
phases of its transition and dissolution, there 
seems to be a continual effort to raise itself 
into a higher state; and a measured gain, 
through the fierce revulsion and slow renewal 
of the earth's frame, in beauty, and order, and 
permanence. The soft white sediments of the 
sea draw themselves, in process of time, into 
smooth knots of sphered symmetry; burdened 
and strained under increase of pressure, they 
pass into a nascent marble ; scorched by fer- 
vent heat, they brighten and blanch into the 
snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark 
drift of the inland river or stagnant slime of 
inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself 
as it dries, into layers of its several elements; 
slowly purifying each by the patient with- 
drawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in 
which it was mingled. Contracted by increas- 
ing drought, till it must shatter into fragments, 
it infuses continually a finer ichor into the 
opening veins, and finds in its weakness the 
first rudiments of a perfect strength. Rent 
at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, 
and tormented in lambent fire, it knits, through 
the fusion, the fibers of a perennial endur- 
ance; and, during countless subsequent cen- 
turies, declining, or, rather let me say, rising, 
to repose, finishes the infallible luster of its 
crystalline beauty, under harmonies of law 
w r hich are wholly beneficent, because wholly 
inexorable. 

(The children seem pleased, but more in- 



218 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

clined to think over these matters than to 
talk.) 

L. (after giving them a little time). Mary, 
I seldom ask you to read anything out of books 
of mine ; but there is a passage about the Law 
of Help, which I want you to read to the 
children now, because it is of no use merely to 
put it in other words for them. You know the 
place I mean, do not you? 

Mary. Yes (presently finding it); where 
shall I begin? 

L. Here ; but the elder ones had better look 
afterward at the piece which comes just before 
this. 

Mary (reads) : 

"A pure or holy state of anything is that in 
which all its parts are helpful or consistent. 
The highest and first law of the universe, and 
the other name of life, is therefore 'help.' The 
other name of death is * separation/ Govern- 
ment and co-operation are in all things, and 
eternally, the laws of life. Anarchy and com- 
petition, eternally, and in all things, the laws 
of death. 

"Perhaps the best, though the most familiar, 
example we could take of the nature and 
power of conscience, will be that of the possi- 
ble changes in the dust we tread on. 

" Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly 
arrive at a more absolute type of impurity, 
than the mud or slime of a damp, over-trodden 
path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. 
I do not say mud of the road, because that is 
mixed with animal refuse ; but take merely an 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 219 

ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten 
footpath, on a rainy day, near a manufactur- 
ing town. That slime we shall find in most 
cases composed of clay (or brickdust, which is 
burnt clay), mixed with soot, a little sand and 
water. All these elements are at helpless 
war with each other, and destroy reciprocally 
each other's nature and power: competing and 
fighting for place at every tread of your foot ; 
sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing 
out water, and soot meddling everywhere, and 
defiling the whole. Let us suppose that this 
ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that 
its elements gather together, like to like, so 
that their atoms may get into the closest rela- 
tions possible. 

4 'Let the clay begin. Ridding itself of all 
foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white 
earth, already very beautiful, and fit, with 
help of congealing fire, to be made into finest 
porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in 
king's palaces. But such artificial consistence 
is not its best. Leave it still quiet, to follow 
its own instinct of unity, and it becomes, not 
only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; 
not only clear and hard, but so set that it can 
deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather 
out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing 
the rest. We call it then a sapphire. 

"Such being the consummation of the clay, 
we give similar permission of quiet to the 
sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth; 
then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at 
last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely 



220 THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 

fine parallel lines, which have the power of 
reflecting, not merely the blue rays, but the 
blue, green, purple, and red rays, in the 
greatest beauty in which they can be seen 
through any hard material whatsoever. We 
call it then an opal. 

"In next order the soot sets to work. It 
cannot make itself white at first ; but, instead 
of being discouraged, tries harder and harder; 
and comes out clear at last; and the hardest 
thing in the world ; and for the blackness that 
it had, obtains in exchange the power of re- 
flecting all the rays of the sun at once, in the 
vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. 
We call it then a diamond. 

44 Last of all, the water purifies, or unites 
itself; contented enough if it only reach the 
form of a dewdrop : but if we insist on its pro- 
ceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crys- 
tallizes into the shape of a star. And, for the 
ounce of slime which we had by political econ- 
omy of competition, we have, by political 
economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, 
and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of 
snow. " 

L. I have asked you to hear that, children, 
because, from all that we have seen in the 
work and play of these past days, I would have 
you gain at least one grave and enduring 
thought. The seeming trouble, — the unques- 
tionable degradation, — of the elements of the 
physical earth, must passively wait the ap- 
pointed time of their repose, or their restora- 
tion. It can only be brought about for them 



THE ETHICS OF THE DUST. 221 

by the agency of external law. But if, indeed, 
there be a nobler life in us than in these 
strangely moving atoms; — if, indeed, there is 
an eternal difference between the fire which 
inhabits them, and that which animates us, — 
it must be shown, by each of us in his ap- 
pointed place, not merely in the patience, but 
in the activity of our hope ; not merely by our 
desire, but our labor, for the time when the 
Dust of the generations of men shall be con- 
firmed for foundations of the gates of the city 
of God. The human clay, now trampled and 
despised, will not be,— cannot be, — knit into 
strength and light by accident or ordinances 
of unassisted fate. By human cruelty and in- 
iquity it has been afflicted; — by human mercy 
and justice it must be raised: and, in all fear 
or questioning of what is or is not, the real 
message of creation, or of revelation, you may 
assuredly find perfect peace, if you are re- 
solved to do that which your Lord has plainly 
required, — and content that He should indeed 
require no more oZ you, — than to do Justice, 
to love Mercy, and to walk humbly with Him. 



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